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Valheim launches on Xbox Game Pass today

by Adam Cook on March 14, 2023

Coffee Stain Publishing and Iron Gate have today announced that hugely popular survival game Valheim is now available for Xbox consoles, as well as launching day one in Xbox Game Pass.

This means that after well over a year in early access for PC (it launched on 2nd February 2021), Xbox players can now get to see what all the fuss is about, though it’s worth noting the game isn’t “finished” and is still in the preview program on Xbox consoles.

The Xbox version has been ported by an external team at Fishlabs with crossplay features by Piktiv (both studios also worked on the Windows Store version), and you can check out the trailer below:

The team says that “Valheim’s arrival to Xbox consoles also introduces a new controller layout that offers an intuitive and natural gameplay experience”. Here’s the official word on the Xbox version:

While the Iron Gate team were hard at work on Valheim’s recently released Mistlands update, featuring its new magical biome, the Xbox port has been developed by an external team at Fishlabs with crossplay features by Piktiv, both of which worked on the Microsoft Store version as well.

Valheim hit PC Early Access in February 2021 to immediate and widespread critical acclaim, as it quickly rose up bestseller lists and won the Best Debut and Audience Choice awards at the Game Developers Choice Awards. Since then, the game has seen two major content updates, Hearth and Home and Mistlands, and additional minor content drops fleshing out the existing biomes in between.

We have been playing the PC version for a while, and back in February 2022, Mick said it feels like a “grown up survival game”, adding “Having hit 2 million downloads on Steam in early access, Valheim is almost certainly going to stick around and get bigger and better. If Iron Gate AB stick to their current ethos of delivering faster-paced survival with the true freedom of opt-in PvP and community spirit, this could one day be the biggest survival game available. And considering the size of some of the current dominators, that’s no mean feat”.