Valheim left early access on 9 September, and the scores that came back are the kind survival games almost never get. IGN gave it ten out of ten, the Metacritic average sits at 89, and on Steam the game climbed from ninety eighth place to twelfth in a week.
What the critics gave it
The PC version currently has fourteen reviews on Metacritic and a score of 89. Mixed: zero. Negative: zero. All fourteen are positive.
The IGN review went up on 8 September, a day before release, with a hundred. Its wording: Valheim is the oath of the ultimate survival crafting adventure fulfilled, with a gorgeous art style, deadly dungeons, charming homesteading mechanics, and a breathtaking scope. A second hundred came from TheGamer.
Fourteen reviews is not many and the counter will keep moving. But when not one of them is even lukewarm, that says more than the number itself.
What happened to the player count
Here the figures are more interesting than the scores. In Valve's own weekly rollup Valheim sits at number twelve, having been ninety eighth the week before. Its peak for the week was 168 093 players at once.
For comparison, in the same rollup Palworld peaked at 117 856, Marvel Rivals at 95 219 and Rainbow Six Siege at 90 270. A five year old game, in its 1.0 week, out-peaked half of the most played list.
And this is not a launch day blip: as I write this there are 176 378 people in the game, which is above the weekly peak. It still costs 29.99 euro, the price was not raised for the full version.
What is in this version
The heart of 1.0 is the Deep North, the last biome on the map and the reason the game stayed in early access for five and a half years. Along with it came achievements, absent all these years, and work on how large builds perform.
A full breakdown of what happens to old worlds, how achievements are counted and why cheats mark a character permanently sits in our separate piece on the 1.0 release. In short, your old world stays, but Iron Gate advises starting fresh.
I will admit I did not expect this reception. Five years in early access usually end with nobody noticing the release, because everyone has already had their fill. Here it went the other way, and this is the rare case where the long build paid off.
Sources
Average score, review count, the IGN score and its wording: the Valheim review page on Metacritic, checked on 10 September 2026.
Position in the weekly rollup and peak players: the official Valve GetMostPlayedGames feed, rollup of 10 September 2026. Current players: the official Steam counter.
Early access exit date and price: the Valheim page on Steam.
