'After the day one sales, we realised this was a huge hit for us,' says Coffee Stain CEO Albert SГ¤fstrГ¶m. It went on to shift six million in its first six weeks, and while that suggests steady momentum, its success was a little harder to gauge behind the scenes. Valheim went on to exceed this by quite some margin, shifting more than one million units in its first week of being in Early Access. We were confident that the game would do well, and definitely sell in the tens of thousands in the first week.'

'We knew from the beta period that the game was well received by players, who played more than we thought they would - that set us up with quite positive expectations. 'We were quite overwhelmed,' says Sebastian Badylak, executive producer for Valheim at Coffee Stain. 'With Iron Gate being only five people, it's hard for them to burn through that much cash in the first few months - we'd be pretty worried if they did' We've seen it in the past year with Mediatonic's Fall Guys and Innersloth's Among Us - albeit the latter had already been on the market for a couple of years - where the developers have a sudden influx of demand and attention they need to scramble to deal with.Д®arlier this year, Viking-themed co-operative action game Valheim joined these ranks, and not only was developer Iron Gate Studios caught off guard, but so was its publisher Coffee Stain Publishing - best known for Deep Rock Galactic and Satisfactory. Very occasionally, an independently developed game will become a smash hit seemingly overnight and stand toe-to-toe with AAA blockbusters as the industry's most popular titles.

Stained giant jenga game for sale