Valheim's creative director is still 'dedicated on Valheim every day' in addition to his new co-op dungeon crawler: 'We love making games so much that we want to make more games'

Developer Iron Gate Studios released Valheim into early access almost exactly five years ago, and the finish line may finally now be in sight: work on the survival game's final biome is underway and the launch on PlayStation and Switch 2 is planned for 2026. While there's been no official word, I wouldn't be surprised if Valheim's long-awaited version 1.0 finally arrived this year.

But a recent announcement from a few of Valheim's developers hasn't sat well with some players. Three members of Iron Gate's Valheim's team, including creative director Robin Eyre, have been working on a different game, co-op dungeon crawler Begraved, "in the evenings and on weekends."

Begraved isn't being made at Iron Gate, it's a fully independent project under the banner of a new studio called Grip Jaw, but some players have expressed concern about the idea that Valheim's devs are working on a second game before fully finishing their first.

"I can't help but feel that it could be splitting focus and dragging out what has already been a long development process," said a player on Reddit.

"Its been 4 years in early access and there's still no sign of the end. And now they were working on a second game?" said another.

I got the chance to play some Begraved with Eyre last week, and while we played I asked for his reaction to fans who are wondering: "Why are you making a second game before your first game is complete?"

"This was something that was a little bit worrying for us, and it has always been," said Eyre. "Because [Begraved] is not competing in any way with Valheim, and we don't want this to compete in any way with Valheim.

"I think that the bottom line is that we're not owners of Iron Gate. We're just employees at Iron Gate," he said. "We just want to make games, and we want to have our outlet. So this is our hobby in the evenings, just making something small in scope and be able to produce and release something in our spare time."

Eyre said he accepts that no matter what he says, it may not change some people's minds about working on two games at once. "But the truth is that is we work dedicated on Valheim every day, and we're going towards the 1.0 launch, which is going to be a really, really big thing. And we only have that much time every day to be able to work on it, and then we have to go home and and do other stuff," he said. "But the takeaway here would be that we love making games so much that we want to make more games."

Eyre has been working on Valheim for years, and says he still enjoys it. "It's just I want to make more, to be able to produce and make more fun games, even if it's a small little pixel art game," he said. "I just want to be able to make more and I totally understand when it's like, 'Ah, you're making this instead of Valheim.' No, I'm making this and Valheim."

"And if I could, I would make a third game as well," he said, laughing. "But I don't have enough time."