Hero image: Valheim promotional art. Image: Iron Gate Studio, via Coffee Stain Publishing
Iron Gate’s Viking survival game left early access on 9 September, five and a half years after it started. The version that matters to you is the one where your friends can finally join regardless of what they own.
If you have a Valheim world sitting on a PC somewhere with three friends who drifted away because two of them switched to console, you can get them back this week. That is the headline.
Valheim 1.0 shipped on 9 September with full crossplay across every platform it runs on. PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 all share the same worlds. There are no platform-locked lobbies to work around.
PS5 and Switch 2 are new arrivals. Xbox has had it since March 2023, and PC since the early access launch on 2 February 2021.
What you actually do differently
The Deep North is the last biome, and it is the reason to start a fresh world rather than load your old one. Frozen tundra and glacial peaks, with new enemies including Gammeltrolls and Elakingar.
That brings the total to eight, alongside Mistlands and the lava country of Ashlands. If you stopped playing after Mistlands, you have two full biomes of progression waiting and no reason to rush them.
On Switch 2 you get touch controls for menus, HD Rumble 2, and gyroscope aiming for the bow. Gyro aiming is the one worth turning on before you decide whether the handheld version is viable.
One thing consoles cannot do is host a dedicated server. If your group wants a world that stays up when nobody is playing, someone still needs a PC or a hosted box. Everyone else joins from whatever they own.
Check your machine, then stop worrying about it
The PC requirements have barely moved in five years. Minimum is a GTX 950 or Radeon HD 7970 on 8 GB of RAM, with a recommended tier of a GTX 1060 or RX 580 on 16 GB.
Storage is 1 GB. That is not a typo, and it is worth sitting with for a second in a year where a single release routinely asks for a hundred times that.
The number worth watching
Valheim has sold more than 12 million copies and holds 94 per cent positive across 262,371 English-language Steam reviews. Metacritic has it at 89.
The recent figure is softer. Over the last 30 days it sits at 83 per cent positive across 9,138 reviews — still Very Positive, but eleven points below the lifetime average, and that window covers the 1.0 launch itself.
That gap is the thing to keep an eye on rather than panic about. A five-year early access game going 1.0 across four new platforms in one day will generate launch complaints, and a drop of that size in that window is ordinary. If it has not recovered by the end of October, it means something.
And one small mercy
After five and a half years and three major content updates, the entire downloadable content catalogue for Valheim is one soundtrack. Everything else — every biome, every boss, every building piece — arrived free.
It is a useful contrast with the fourteen-item cosmetic list attached to this month’s other big release, and a reminder that the storefront is a choice rather than an inevitability.
Out now on PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch 2. It is on Game Pass if you are on Xbox.
Source: Steam, Gematsu / Coffee Stain Publishing