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Looks like Iron Gate AB and Coffee Stain Publishing did well, with the survival game Valheim doing fantastic.

After entering Early Access on February 2, it has repeatedly climbed up the top lists on Steam for players and sales hitting a fresh record of 131,153 online on Sunday February 7. Nothing is ever guaranteed to be a hit but it looks like they managed to find quite the sweet-spot and thankfully this hit has full Linux support, with the main developer even working from Linux.

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Not only is it doing well on sales and players, it's reviewing well overall too. It's gained over 8 thousand user reviews, with it already hitting an Overwhelmingly Positive status. The developer put up something of a teaser for their roadmap too, which gives the names of a few planned updates along with a confirmed new biome coming. We might also see multiplayer interactions, combat improvements, moon phases, tar pits, a sandbox mode and more "if Odin wills it".

Feature Highlight:

  • Huge procedurally-generated world - explore and inhabit mystical lands, from mysteriousforests to imposing snow-topped mountain ranges and stunning meadows, complete with their own creatures of legend to battle and wildlife to hunt.
  • Co-op PvE (2-10 players) - - Whether you want to brave the lands alone or venture with trusted allies, Valheim supports independent, player-hosted servers and unlimited world creation. We recommend playing co-op with 3-5 players.
  • Punishing dodge & block based combat system with a wide range of weapons
  • Build & sail ships - from flimsy rafts to imposing warships, build legendary vessels to conquer the seas and discover new lands.
  • Summon and defeat vengeful primordial bosses of myth and legend, and collect trophies to progress and craft new powerful items
  • Flexible house and base building system - raise mead halls, farms, settlements outposts, castles and more.
  • Intuitive item crafting - forge the finest weapons and armour, and craft food and mead.
  • Dedicated server- for players who want to run a persistent server. If you prefer not to run a server on your PC, consider renting a server at G-Portal.

If you're thinking about buying Valheim - be wary of the smoke. When building your house, you need a fire. You also need a roof for your bed and once you start containing everything with walls and a roof, things get a bit tough to breath. Smoke isn't just for show here either, so be sure to come up with some sort of fireplace with a chimney.

You can buy Valheim with Linux support on Steam.

On a side-note: the excellent LinuxGSM project just recently added support for running Valheim servers, so if you're interested in hosting your own cheaply that's probably the way to go. If you want to hook up with other Linux players, our Discord has a Game Server channel with multiple people hosting already and plenty of regulars from our community joining in on the fun.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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27 comments
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scaine Feb 9, 2021
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Definitely the polar opposite of my experience. I tend to avoid early access for much the same reason, but took a chance on this, figuring that the worst of the issues would be ironed out by the Itch run. I was right - this is very a polished, immersive, engaging experience. Well worth the price. I have coming up 10 hours in game, just defeated the first boss and I'm going to take a break from it for now, hopefully streaming it next month with the GOL gang.

It's weird that people criticise the games graphics/looks too. It's stunning. Sure, it's low poly, but nonetheless, it's stunning.
STiAT Feb 9, 2021
Started playing, I was shocked how bad the character creator looked compared to the in game graphics which I find more appealing.

It's a fun game, but I did not have the time to play as much as I'd like, but I think for me it will be a game to play a few hours here and there.
kuhpunkt Feb 10, 2021
Already sold over 1 million copies, generating ~$20 million, so they already earned the 25% cut. Shouldn't take long until they pass the $50 million mark.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/892970/announcements/detail/3059603085894895512
Nanobang Feb 11, 2021
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I might be interested in this down the line, but what kind of money are we talking about here? I've done a cursory once-over their site and found not even a mention of them wanting money.
LinuxGSM is just a tool you use to automate self-hosting wherever you want.

What threw me was your use of the word 'cheaply' where you wrote, '...interested in hosting your own cheaply ...', since cheaply means that it costs money, just not very much money. What were you referring to?


Last edited by Nanobang on 11 February 2021 at 3:45 pm UTC
Liam Dawe Feb 11, 2021
I might be interested in this down the line, but what kind of money are we talking about here? I've done a cursory once-over their site and found not even a mention of them wanting money.
LinuxGSM is just a tool you use to automate self-hosting wherever you want.

What threw me was your use of the word 'cheaply' where you wrote, '...interested in hosting your own cheaply ...', since cheaply means that it costs money, just not very much money. What were you referring to?
To host your own somewhere, at a low cost, using the LinuxGSM tooling.
slaapliedje Feb 13, 2021
I might be interested in this down the line, but what kind of money are we talking about here? I've done a cursory once-over their site and found not even a mention of them wanting money.
LinuxGSM is just a tool you use to automate self-hosting wherever you want.

What threw me was your use of the word 'cheaply' where you wrote, '...interested in hosting your own cheaply ...', since cheaply means that it costs money, just not very much money. What were you referring to?
To host your own somewhere, at a low cost, using the LinuxGSM tooling.

Is it a sign of my age that I think LinuxGSM should be a project about making a cell phone run with Linux? ;P

For those who don't want to look into the details (and it took me a second to see where the cost was and what LinuxGSM really does)...
Basically it's a script that helps keep your server up to date and running. The cost seems to be their partnership with GameServerApp.com, which has a dashboard for managing some things, or just seeing traffic, etc.

Does that sound about right? Otherwise you can host your server wherever, whether on Linode, AWS, your house, etc.

Every once in a while I get a hankering to host a game server. Then no one joins it, so I stop hosting it.
DebianUser Feb 15, 2021
Its strange to see that i have absolutely miserable perfs with Vulkan (even the main menu is unusable, may be at 1 FPS..), but with OpenGL the game is perfect.
I play other vulkan games (or even Windows games with DXVK) without problems.

@All: be aware of the unfixed (not yet reproductible for IronGate) "World destroyer bug", save ~/.config/IronGate/Valheim frequently. https://www.pcgamesn.com/valheim/world-bug


Last edited by DebianUser on 15 February 2021 at 4:49 pm UTC
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