Valheim developer admits he released the game in Early Access because he couldn’t afford further development

Development of Valheim did not stop after the release of version 1.0. The team continues to roll out updates, but they are currently mostly focused on bug fixes and game balance adjustments.

Valheim creator Richard Svensson revealed that launching the game in Steam Early Access in 2021 was his only reasonable option due to a lack of money. According to him, without this distribution model, the project would hardly have achieved comparable success, and interaction with players helped determine the future direction of development.

Valheim was released in Steam Early Access in February 2021. At that time, developer Richard Svensson was working on the game almost single-handedly and needed to find a way to continue production. As he shared in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, he had simply run out of funds for further development.

During the first month after release, Valheim sold over five million copies. Since then, the game’s sales have reached 17 million copies. Despite this success, the developer is in no hurry to significantly expand the team, even though the current scale of production is incomparable to what it was at the launch of Early Access.

However, as Svensson notes, he would have released the game in Early Access even without experiencing financial difficulties. The opportunity to roll out the project incrementally and receive feedback from the community became one of the key factors behind Valheim’s success.

Early Access allows for direct engagement with the audience and makes it possible to understand what people truly expect from the project, Svensson says.