Valheim was once a Viking battle royale game, and maybe it still will be

My name is Lauren Bergin (there's a middle name in there, but I don't know you that well), and, as you can likely tell, my heritage is Norwegian - I would say that they named a city after my family, but unfortunately it's spelled differently. As a result, I love all things Nordic, and Valheim fits neatly into that box. While the survival genre as a whole doesn't really interest me, Iron Gate's Viking adventure stands as one of its pillars, and having played it once or twice, it's easy to see why. But, back in the beginning, Valheim wasn't supposed to be a survival game; instead, it was a battle royale akin to Apex Legends or, my personal favorite, WoW's Plunderstorm. Imagine how different the gaming world would be.

At Gamescom 2025, I asked producer Andreas Tomasson and creative lead Robin Eyre about what it's like to be at the helm of arguably the best survival game ever made. "It's an absolute honor to be used like 'it's a Valheim game mixed with this game,'" Eyre says. "Generally, we just want to see more great games, so if anyone sees this and wants to make a game like Valheim, go for it - it'll just push the survival genre forward."

Then, however, Eyre tells me that Iron Gate "didn't really set out to make a survival game," which made my ears visibly perk up. "Valheim was supposed to be a battle royale back in the day, with Vikings dropping down and just trying to survive or get to the middle. But, we turned it into this instead, and it was important for us to have co-op, but no PvP. Obviously you can turn on friendly fire and things, but we feel like doing stuff together is the way that we want to play games - we don't want to be against each other."

Being the diligent journalist that I am, I couldn't let the mention of a Valheim battle royale slide. It's no secret that the genre quickly became oversaturated post-Fortnite, so I ask Eyre and Tomasson if they think they made the right choice by going down the survival route and if, potentially, we'd see a BR mode further down the line.

"I can still see it," Eyre says with a smile. "I can still see it as a game mode as well. At one point it was also supposed to have an MMO feel to it with peer-to-peer connections, but I think that if you go into the battle royale [scene], you'll bring a specific crowd into that area that I don't think necessarily represents us or Valheim itself. But I think it'd be pretty cool to be Vikings and have Valkyries come in and drop you; you'd be flying, you'd land, and you'd get to the center and try and survive the team fights as well. But I'm happy with what we've achieved so far."

"We have been joking a lot about burger royale," Tomasson chimes in, drawing a perplexed look from this writer, amplified by the mysterious bottle of hot sauce that's sitting on the table in front of him. "Like small burgers in the game that come swooping in, [he makes a swooping noise that I'll translate as 'swwsshhh'], dropping like comets. I've been wanting to make this for years as an April Fools' thing but haven't made it yet - maybe next year."

"We've got so many spinoff ideas that we could do," laughs Eyre, to which Tomasson responds "many of them stupid, but some really good [ones] as well." "They're all good!" Eyre replies, before we descend into a fit of giggles.

If the thought of interstellar burgers and feuding Vikings is enough to lure you back to Iron Gate's survival adventure, we have a list of the best Valheim mods to freshen up your next playthrough, as well as a rundown of all the best Valheim servers, too.

What's your favorite burger? Tell us over on Discord, and the more that it relates to Valheim, the better.