During yesterday's ID@Xbox showcase, Microsoft announced that the survival sandbox game Valheim will be available on September 29th via the Microsoft Store. At the same time, it will be added to the library of PC Game Pass subscribers.
Valheim enjoyed incredible success immediately after its early 2021 debut on Steam Early Access. The game turned out to be one of the best-selling games of the whole year on Valve's platform, far exceeding the expectation of the small indie team at Iron Gate AB.
It caused some problems later on, though, as the many million (over 10 million as of last July) users were anxiously waiting for new content to drop. That said, the developers are still laboriously working to introduce updates to Valheim, and the latest Public Test Branch has just added crossplay support. Iron Gate AB explained:
Our friends at Piktiv have worked hard to make sure the game looks and feels the same regardless of what platform you’re using, and if you’re playing as a Steam player with other Steam players, nothing will be different. You will only notice a change if you’re running a dedicated server, where you can choose for it to support crossplay. If you enable this, players will be able to join the server both by using the regular IP address or by using a join code specific to the server.
As always, make sure your game has the same patch version as your friends’, or else connecting to each other might not work. You’ll find the version number in the bottom right corner of your main menu screen.
Indeed, Valheim will be released for consoles at some point in early 2023, and Game Pass subscribers on Xbox will also receive the game in their libraries.
That said, one of the greatest advantages of Valheim on Steam is the huge modding capability that allowed RPG mods, HD texture mods, MMO mods, VR mods, and much more. The Game Pass version might be more limited in this regard.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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