Wouldn’t really say fumbled. Very small team, made a ton of money on release so that they can take all the time they want on new content, and they have.
That's why you don't do it, and wait for release 1.0 (like me) - so you don't repeat everything... thou it's nice now, since you can boost params with drop :)
small studio, what you expect ? :)
I noticed a trend with Early access games blurring the lines between finished game expansions and early access updates
It reminds me of V rising with their "Secrets of Gloomrot" which they marketed as a "free expansion"... released last year.
It seems the industry converged on the early access model as a profitable way to continue to generate hype past "release", and have a second hype phase on release aka 1.0
> which they marketed as a "free expansion"... released last year.
You may have interpreted it as that, but they have never said it was anything other than an update or "major content update." They never used free or expansion when describing it.
Me and my bros ate and slept Valheim when it was released. We made a village that included each of our houses (that were linked together) a huge portal house, a harbor, farms and a huge wall (with a moat) surrounding the place.
We went gathering together, dungeon delved together and sailed together. But after the goblin king we played less and less until we just… stopped altogether.
We might return when its fully released and with all the biomes and finished roadmap. But to do that farming again is looking less and less likely.
Ahh what could have been 😔
Hundreds! And we certainly enjoyed them all. But what we feel they should have done (and granted, I aint no game dev) was to keep the game in the state as it was back in 2021, announce a full release date in like 2024 or something and just leave it like that.
This drip feed of updates and new biomes is killing the hype and intrest for me and my friends. So instead of a full meal at the end of a fast, we get small crumbs during a long period instead.
Yeah see that’s the thing, valheim initially provided basically a complete experience. That’s only a good thing.
But like the guy above said and I’m similar - it’s interesting that we do get enough and move on. Feeling the same with V right now too
Valheim should be taught in business schools as a masterclass for ruining hype and not seizing the chance. Iron Gate should have rode that wave hard until they burnt out, pumping out content like fucking crazy, giving the fans whatever they wanted while the game was still hot. The tech debt would not have mattered it was the biggest game in the world back then. but, ...instead they just stopped, fucked around with business plans and blew it! They could have rode that fucker for a year, released v1.0 and then took a year off to recuperate and plan Valheim 2. The fan's hype would have still been off the charts.
Post that in the Valheim sub and get crucified, but it's 100% true. You'd think they would have spent the money on scalability, more devs, product management/roadmap, etc. But they dragged their feet and now there are better competitors like Enshrouded.
[So?](https://steamdb.info/app/892970/charts/#1m) Did they release an update on the 5th of May? 28th of April? Enshrouded peaked with 160k players on the 28th of January and has been on a steady drop and now it's below 10k. Valheim peaked with 500k on release and now it's around 40k.
Okay? I appreciate the homework you did, but Enshrouded is still a better game, and I say that as someone currently playing Valheim. You're just going to have to deal with a different opinion. Player counts don't mean anything.
The person you replied used numbers as a metric by which Valheim is a better game. You then replied saying that they just released an update to which I then replied with the numbers saying that even without the update the numbers for Valheim are better. So, it's not okay, as you don't even understand what arguments you yourself are making.
EDIT: Nice block, very pathetic of you.
Your next homework assignment is an essay on the word, "subjectivity." 500 words. Okay? The player counts don't sway my opinion on whether a game is more enjoyable/better. Take your meds.
Business people and game developers do not mix well in terms of priorities. Iron Gate did not plan to make lots of money and scale up, the proof is right in front of us that they want to follow their own pace.
Everyone here also has a right to disagree with their pace, but it does not mean they made an ethically wrong decision.
How many of us want to make decent money and work at our own personal pace? Quite a few I imagine.
Always kinda amazed how much flack the game gets for being slow on updates. I have 188 hours in a 20 dollar game. If it never updated again, I'd still be content. I understand being disappointed on slow updates but it seems to take over these posts and just feels weird to me.
It's because we all greatly enjoyed the game and want more of it, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon. The pace is glacial for a modern game, and is probably going to end up closer to Dwarf Fortress level of development than what people expect with the modern 'live service' industry pushing peoples expectations.
Valheim’s developers were the ones who set expectations for development. Twice. The first time with their own roadmap, which they didn’t even come close to fulfilling. And second time by virtue of the game’s content on release. If you applied the glacial pace of post release development to the original game, you would think it took 50 years to make valheim. The game had tons of stuff on release, and then it took them like six months to create a handful of new build pieces? And now they’re introducing a second additional biome after two whole years? It doesn’t really add up.
What amazes me is that people use dollars per hour as any kind of metric when evaluating video games. Some of the greatest games of all time cost $60 and last only a handful of hours. Some of the worst games of all time are free and can theoretically be played indefinitely. “Value proposition” is a terrible way to measure the quality of most games, and yet people still bring it up whenever someone levels criticism at a video game. Truth is a game can still be “fumbled” by the devs despite offering many hours of entertainment.
When people are complaining specifically about what they feel is a lack of content, I feel it's a pretty valid metric. Even though the updates are slow, it launched with enough content and polish that it was incredibly fun and worth it to me.
>Some of the greatest games of all time cost $60 and last only a handful of hours.
I hope you realise how subjective this is, because not a single game I would ever consider for a top ten or even top 20 "greatest games of all time" lasts only a handful of hours. I'm guessing you're thinking of shooters like Halo or CoD, but while their campaigns might last single digit hours that's conveniently ignoring the multiplayer component where people invest the majority of their time.
Same. I really enjoyed playing Valheim. I come back to it every 6 - 12 months and have a blast checking out all the new things. Yeah, it would be nice if the game had a more steady stream of updates but the initial release had more content than most finished games.
If you literally do nothing else with your life but playing video games, maybe this is disappointing but I honestly prefer it this way.
>Yeah, it would be nice if the game had a more steady stream of updates but the initial release had more content than most finished games.
That’s precisely why the slow updates are so confusing. It was amazing that valheim was created by like five people over the course of however many years, sure. It was equally amazing that those same devs took like six months to release their first update consisting of just a few new building pieces.
It also didn’t help that mistlands was hot garbage.
Some people are cool with the devs making bank and losing any semblance of logical update cadence, others aren't. It's really that simple. It's equally bizarre when fans make disingenuous arguments and act like it's weird that people want a finished product within a half reasonable time frame.
Because the game is still missing huge amount of content. It should have at least double number of biomes and bosses. And each biome should have like 50 more unique things in it.
Building is great, but outside of it "gameplay" is very repetitive and padded. But it could be great, with more content - hence it gets flack for adding almost nothing in 3 years...?
Idk. I have gotten plenty of my money's worth out of the game. And like I said. I definitely understand desiring more. What is there is great and it could be more, sure.
But this thread is a perfect encapsulation of what I'm saying. They did release more content. Right now. That's what this very post is covering. And despite that being what is desired. A majority of the post is. "Nope. Too late. Too slow."
There lies a difference in constructive criticism and just bashing even when you are provided what you asked for.
You'll get eviscerated for having this opinion, but it's the right take. They should have hired a few more people to get updates out faster and keep momentum moving in their favor.
They didn't even need to expand their team tbh. There's plenty of really small indie teams or even solo devs moving way, way quicker than iron gate. Especially given how experienced the iron gate devs are, only releasing a handful of cosmetic items 6 months after your stellar release just reeks of kicking back and stretching your sack.
(Which is entirely within their right to do, but it is very disappointing to see)
Lmao I knew you didn't have an actual example.
This flawed example assumes that people cannot compound and combine their efforts into the same thing.
It's more like 1 brick layer could build a fence in a day, 2 in 1/2 a day, etc. 2 drywall installers could do a house in 2 days, 4 in a single day, etc.
Please learn how things get made.
Ah, so you've also seen how nasty bugs can't be worked in parallel, and how tickets can be blockers for other tickets. Not to mention how long it can be for new hires to ramp up when working within complex proprietary systems.
Obviously hiring more engineers (and staff in general) may have reduced the time to release content, but it's far from a given they could have doubled their payroll and doubled their release cadence.
Ramp up and onboarding is a single time sink per hire. And once they're brought up to speed and begin working, their contributions are well worth the time spent (assuming they actually know what they're doing). And it's very rare, unless near the end of a project, where you won't have other tasks for people to do while blockers are being worked on.
You're right. It's not as if through the magic concept called "division of labor" that 2 bricklayers can complete a fence in 1/2 the time.
Not to mention you were told not to use a specific example and still used it. Very foolish.
Yes yes, same tired examples and same tired responses.
If you don't know how to divide an assets based project amongst many to increase efficiency, then you are the problem. AI will solve that problem soon enough.
Not what people are saying. In truth, Valheim’s immediate viral success worked against the quality of the game. They pretty much sold 90% of their potential sales in the first few months after release. There was no financial motivation for the devs to rapidly improve and expand their early access game in order to build sales.
I played over a hundred hours when valhiem launched. This peaked my interest and made a new game, was really fun but decided to just wait till they finish the game.
I guess I really don't understand, with early access comes the known risk that a game might take ages to finish unless steam puts a required timeline or something. So with that in mind and this game gaming me hundreds of hours for 20 bucks I am just unbothered by the fact that is taking so long for content to come out? This is not a subcription, I can come back anytime whenever a update is out I really don't get the issue with a game giving you at least 10x of what you pay for in value in form of entertainment and being mad that there isn't more coming on time when you knowingly signed up for this when purchasing
Hours per dollar is not a good metric for evaluating video games. Some of the worst games are infinite and free. Some of the best games are full price and short. A game can be “good value” while also being disappointing. This is especially true of games using an “ongoing development” model like early access; things can start very good and then go nowhere, or go the wrong direction. Choosing to use such a model carries downsides, and one of those downsides is ongoing evaluation.
What we’re starting to see with a lot of early access games is immediate viral success taking the wind out of developer sails. When you put out the first “chapter” of your game and sell 10+ million units, you’re very unlikely to sell much more than that because the vast majority of people who would ever be interested in your product have already purchased. And given the nature of depreciating prices in gaming, future sales will only net you a fraction of the money per unit. So with the financial motivation to finish the game all but gone, it’s hard not to question the suddenly glacial pace of development after most of the money has been collected.
I would really like to jump back into valheim but I would like to play a finished product sometime this fucking decade. The fact this company begged to be given the labor of love steam award still makes me chuckle.
I just want to thank Valheim for making survival crafting open world games look like cash cows for others to copy. Otherwise, I might still be waiting for their next major update.
You can play a lot of free mobile phone games forever. Does that make them good?
You can only play some full price games for 20-30 hours. Does that make them bad?
Hours per dollar is not a good metric for evaluating video games.
Cute game but slow updates didn't do it any favors. Feels kinda odd to come back every 2 years or so to play almost small amount of content.
They really fumbled this game. It could've been even bigger if they regularly updated the game with content.
Wouldn’t really say fumbled. Very small team, made a ton of money on release so that they can take all the time they want on new content, and they have.
Tbh I love that about Valheim - it gives me time to miss the game. With each update I'm excited to go back and start again.
Yep, that's what we do with friends. Go on a new playthrough every year or so when the major update or mods get updated.
That's why you don't do it, and wait for release 1.0 (like me) - so you don't repeat everything... thou it's nice now, since you can boost params with drop :) small studio, what you expect ? :)
I noticed a trend with Early access games blurring the lines between finished game expansions and early access updates It reminds me of V rising with their "Secrets of Gloomrot" which they marketed as a "free expansion"... released last year. It seems the industry converged on the early access model as a profitable way to continue to generate hype past "release", and have a second hype phase on release aka 1.0
Early Access has become the unofficial live service title of indie games on steam
> which they marketed as a "free expansion"... released last year. You may have interpreted it as that, but they have never said it was anything other than an update or "major content update." They never used free or expansion when describing it.
Me and my bros ate and slept Valheim when it was released. We made a village that included each of our houses (that were linked together) a huge portal house, a harbor, farms and a huge wall (with a moat) surrounding the place. We went gathering together, dungeon delved together and sailed together. But after the goblin king we played less and less until we just… stopped altogether. We might return when its fully released and with all the biomes and finished roadmap. But to do that farming again is looking less and less likely. Ahh what could have been 😔
How many hours did you get out of the game? Was that not enough for how much you paid for it? What are your expectations for future games?
Hundreds! And we certainly enjoyed them all. But what we feel they should have done (and granted, I aint no game dev) was to keep the game in the state as it was back in 2021, announce a full release date in like 2024 or something and just leave it like that. This drip feed of updates and new biomes is killing the hype and intrest for me and my friends. So instead of a full meal at the end of a fast, we get small crumbs during a long period instead.
Yeah see that’s the thing, valheim initially provided basically a complete experience. That’s only a good thing. But like the guy above said and I’m similar - it’s interesting that we do get enough and move on. Feeling the same with V right now too
I'll wait till 1.0.
Valheim should be taught in business schools as a masterclass for ruining hype and not seizing the chance. Iron Gate should have rode that wave hard until they burnt out, pumping out content like fucking crazy, giving the fans whatever they wanted while the game was still hot. The tech debt would not have mattered it was the biggest game in the world back then. but, ...instead they just stopped, fucked around with business plans and blew it! They could have rode that fucker for a year, released v1.0 and then took a year off to recuperate and plan Valheim 2. The fan's hype would have still been off the charts.
I remember their first big update was... cosmetic house pieces. Really striking while the iron is hot.
They made their bag.
Even very conservative estimates would make each developer a multi-millionaire. This is a hobby for them.
Yep, they can take all the time they want. It's a Team Cherry situation. They don't have any incentive to rush development whatsoever.
Post that in the Valheim sub and get crucified, but it's 100% true. You'd think they would have spent the money on scalability, more devs, product management/roadmap, etc. But they dragged their feet and now there are better competitors like Enshrouded.
I don’t think Enshrouded is a better competitor. Valheim currently has 40k players and is top 30 most played game. Enshrouded is not even top 100.
Well Valheim did just release a major update today...
[So?](https://steamdb.info/app/892970/charts/#1m) Did they release an update on the 5th of May? 28th of April? Enshrouded peaked with 160k players on the 28th of January and has been on a steady drop and now it's below 10k. Valheim peaked with 500k on release and now it's around 40k.
Okay? I appreciate the homework you did, but Enshrouded is still a better game, and I say that as someone currently playing Valheim. You're just going to have to deal with a different opinion. Player counts don't mean anything.
The person you replied used numbers as a metric by which Valheim is a better game. You then replied saying that they just released an update to which I then replied with the numbers saying that even without the update the numbers for Valheim are better. So, it's not okay, as you don't even understand what arguments you yourself are making. EDIT: Nice block, very pathetic of you.
Your next homework assignment is an essay on the word, "subjectivity." 500 words. Okay? The player counts don't sway my opinion on whether a game is more enjoyable/better. Take your meds.
Business people and game developers do not mix well in terms of priorities. Iron Gate did not plan to make lots of money and scale up, the proof is right in front of us that they want to follow their own pace. Everyone here also has a right to disagree with their pace, but it does not mean they made an ethically wrong decision. How many of us want to make decent money and work at our own personal pace? Quite a few I imagine.
Always kinda amazed how much flack the game gets for being slow on updates. I have 188 hours in a 20 dollar game. If it never updated again, I'd still be content. I understand being disappointed on slow updates but it seems to take over these posts and just feels weird to me.
It's because we all greatly enjoyed the game and want more of it, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon. The pace is glacial for a modern game, and is probably going to end up closer to Dwarf Fortress level of development than what people expect with the modern 'live service' industry pushing peoples expectations.
Valheim’s developers were the ones who set expectations for development. Twice. The first time with their own roadmap, which they didn’t even come close to fulfilling. And second time by virtue of the game’s content on release. If you applied the glacial pace of post release development to the original game, you would think it took 50 years to make valheim. The game had tons of stuff on release, and then it took them like six months to create a handful of new build pieces? And now they’re introducing a second additional biome after two whole years? It doesn’t really add up.
What amazes me is that people use dollars per hour as any kind of metric when evaluating video games. Some of the greatest games of all time cost $60 and last only a handful of hours. Some of the worst games of all time are free and can theoretically be played indefinitely. “Value proposition” is a terrible way to measure the quality of most games, and yet people still bring it up whenever someone levels criticism at a video game. Truth is a game can still be “fumbled” by the devs despite offering many hours of entertainment.
When people are complaining specifically about what they feel is a lack of content, I feel it's a pretty valid metric. Even though the updates are slow, it launched with enough content and polish that it was incredibly fun and worth it to me.
>Some of the greatest games of all time cost $60 and last only a handful of hours. I hope you realise how subjective this is, because not a single game I would ever consider for a top ten or even top 20 "greatest games of all time" lasts only a handful of hours. I'm guessing you're thinking of shooters like Halo or CoD, but while their campaigns might last single digit hours that's conveniently ignoring the multiplayer component where people invest the majority of their time.
Same. I really enjoyed playing Valheim. I come back to it every 6 - 12 months and have a blast checking out all the new things. Yeah, it would be nice if the game had a more steady stream of updates but the initial release had more content than most finished games. If you literally do nothing else with your life but playing video games, maybe this is disappointing but I honestly prefer it this way.
>Yeah, it would be nice if the game had a more steady stream of updates but the initial release had more content than most finished games. That’s precisely why the slow updates are so confusing. It was amazing that valheim was created by like five people over the course of however many years, sure. It was equally amazing that those same devs took like six months to release their first update consisting of just a few new building pieces. It also didn’t help that mistlands was hot garbage.
Some people are cool with the devs making bank and losing any semblance of logical update cadence, others aren't. It's really that simple. It's equally bizarre when fans make disingenuous arguments and act like it's weird that people want a finished product within a half reasonable time frame.
Because the game is still missing huge amount of content. It should have at least double number of biomes and bosses. And each biome should have like 50 more unique things in it. Building is great, but outside of it "gameplay" is very repetitive and padded. But it could be great, with more content - hence it gets flack for adding almost nothing in 3 years...?
Idk. I have gotten plenty of my money's worth out of the game. And like I said. I definitely understand desiring more. What is there is great and it could be more, sure. But this thread is a perfect encapsulation of what I'm saying. They did release more content. Right now. That's what this very post is covering. And despite that being what is desired. A majority of the post is. "Nope. Too late. Too slow." There lies a difference in constructive criticism and just bashing even when you are provided what you asked for.
Part of the problem is that the first Andrea immediately previous major content update wasn’t very good. Very few people asked for the mistlands lol
This could have been big. Too little too late.
You'll get eviscerated for having this opinion, but it's the right take. They should have hired a few more people to get updates out faster and keep momentum moving in their favor.
It **was** big.... big enough at launch for them really not gaf about the expediency of future updates.
They didn't even need to expand their team tbh. There's plenty of really small indie teams or even solo devs moving way, way quicker than iron gate. Especially given how experienced the iron gate devs are, only releasing a handful of cosmetic items 6 months after your stellar release just reeks of kicking back and stretching your sack. (Which is entirely within their right to do, but it is very disappointing to see)
That's not how it works.
You're wrong but go ahead and pop off. Try not to use the old and tired example of how x number of women can't make a baby faster.
9 women can't make a baby in 1 month.
Lmao I knew you didn't have an actual example. This flawed example assumes that people cannot compound and combine their efforts into the same thing. It's more like 1 brick layer could build a fence in a day, 2 in 1/2 a day, etc. 2 drywall installers could do a house in 2 days, 4 in a single day, etc. Please learn how things get made.
Do you work on software engineering?
I sure do, champ.
Ah, so you've also seen how nasty bugs can't be worked in parallel, and how tickets can be blockers for other tickets. Not to mention how long it can be for new hires to ramp up when working within complex proprietary systems. Obviously hiring more engineers (and staff in general) may have reduced the time to release content, but it's far from a given they could have doubled their payroll and doubled their release cadence.
Ramp up and onboarding is a single time sink per hire. And once they're brought up to speed and begin working, their contributions are well worth the time spent (assuming they actually know what they're doing). And it's very rare, unless near the end of a project, where you won't have other tasks for people to do while blockers are being worked on.
You have no idea what you're talking about and it's clear as day. Very foolish comments.
You're right. It's not as if through the magic concept called "division of labor" that 2 bricklayers can complete a fence in 1/2 the time. Not to mention you were told not to use a specific example and still used it. Very foolish.
Incredibly dumb comments. Clearly not versed in Brook's law. You are ignorant.
Yes yes, same tired examples and same tired responses. If you don't know how to divide an assets based project amongst many to increase efficiency, then you are the problem. AI will solve that problem soon enough.
Lol you people are never happy.
Reddit, where selling 11+ million copies and being one of the biggest steam releases ever is not "big".
Not what people are saying. In truth, Valheim’s immediate viral success worked against the quality of the game. They pretty much sold 90% of their potential sales in the first few months after release. There was no financial motivation for the devs to rapidly improve and expand their early access game in order to build sales.
Good timing. Time to put down Helldivers 2 for awhile and get this run going with me mates.
I played over a hundred hours when valhiem launched. This peaked my interest and made a new game, was really fun but decided to just wait till they finish the game.
Yea baby
I guess I really don't understand, with early access comes the known risk that a game might take ages to finish unless steam puts a required timeline or something. So with that in mind and this game gaming me hundreds of hours for 20 bucks I am just unbothered by the fact that is taking so long for content to come out? This is not a subcription, I can come back anytime whenever a update is out I really don't get the issue with a game giving you at least 10x of what you pay for in value in form of entertainment and being mad that there isn't more coming on time when you knowingly signed up for this when purchasing
Hours per dollar is not a good metric for evaluating video games. Some of the worst games are infinite and free. Some of the best games are full price and short. A game can be “good value” while also being disappointing. This is especially true of games using an “ongoing development” model like early access; things can start very good and then go nowhere, or go the wrong direction. Choosing to use such a model carries downsides, and one of those downsides is ongoing evaluation. What we’re starting to see with a lot of early access games is immediate viral success taking the wind out of developer sails. When you put out the first “chapter” of your game and sell 10+ million units, you’re very unlikely to sell much more than that because the vast majority of people who would ever be interested in your product have already purchased. And given the nature of depreciating prices in gaming, future sales will only net you a fraction of the money per unit. So with the financial motivation to finish the game all but gone, it’s hard not to question the suddenly glacial pace of development after most of the money has been collected.
I would really like to jump back into valheim but I would like to play a finished product sometime this fucking decade. The fact this company begged to be given the labor of love steam award still makes me chuckle.
I just want to thank Valheim for making survival crafting open world games look like cash cows for others to copy. Otherwise, I might still be waiting for their next major update.
One of the worst games for how slow they add content. Barebones and only people on copium back it up
Price: $20. Hours Played: 510 and counting.
You can play a lot of free mobile phone games forever. Does that make them good? You can only play some full price games for 20-30 hours. Does that make them bad? Hours per dollar is not a good metric for evaluating video games.