Originally posted by Eightball:

Personally I can say I have gotten more than my money's worth out of the game already so anything more is gravy when looked at cost-play wise.

Fair opinion, good for you.

Originally posted by FissionChips:

I don't know about the xbox console(s), but it's also on xbox "PC". I... have complained to them before that we're locked into Steam, I think because Steam Cloud is a steaming pile of ♥♥♥♥. So if Valheim is coming to more PC distributors that is IMO a good thing - I would even consider transferring my PC ownership away from Steam if it were an option.

Fair opinion, I can understand that.

Originally posted by ShaftAlmighty:

From PC to console conversions, there is almost always a third party involved in order to avoid delays. Makes perfect sense, really.

Sure. But many times these games which are ported are allready finished games (Past v1.0.0 of the game). For example, Horizon Zero Dawn. There are other challenges with this which will hamper/slow down development time of a pc game which is not finished. I will explain why PC development is slowed down in the end.

Originally posted by Foxglovez:

You aren't funding anything. You just bought a game for the low price of $20(US). And you are about a year and a half late to the show. This dev team probably increased the Swedish national GDP a point or two on their very own having sold over 8 Million copies when it first came out. Their speed of development is their choice. We are merely purchasers of the early access game they choose to give us. We have no power, they already have our money.
It's a great game for those of us that are more journey oriented, can spent way too many thousands of hours on it, even unfinished. If you are in a rush, play through and come back with the next update, easy squeezie.

I really don't care about the Swedish GDP. I care about playing the game, preferably a finished one. If you dont think you have any power to influence the development of a early access game after a purchase, I dont understand why you're commenting here.

Originally posted by Hiryukaen:

TLDR: Another unwarranted overreaction from someone who didn't bother to read any of the news postings or updates posted to steam, discord, nor twitter because they saw something and immediately formulated an alternate reality where they don't like what the devs are doing.

I've bought the game about 1 and a half year ago. There has been a lot of players complaining about slow updates. You can disagree with them if you like, but you cant ignore there has been complaints. It's true I didn't catch that another company is making the xbox version of the game. I did specify this further down in a later reply though. Would you care to enlighten the rest of the people on this thread what I ate for breakfast today, since you clearly know me so well? Or are a bit quick to judge maybe?

Anyway, let me explain in detail why work on the game for multiple platforms will slow down the development. And definetively after the XBOX release.

Here's some networking 101: For state (information about the game state) to be shared successfully shared between different clients, and especially game clients - They need to share similar assets (graphical assets), logic (gameplay) and version.
In practice - this means that a client (A) which is on Version 0.0.2 and has a big rock on a road (+ is host) gets connected to another client, lets call it client B, which is on version 0.0.1 , and does *not* have the rock - will not render the rock. It might cause crash, and if the game is lucky, it will just render an invisible collision box.


So, what does this mean in practice ? For the xbox and pc version of the game, it means they have to be on identical versions - to avoid bugs. In practice this means that every time the developers add a features, a graphical asset or some gameplay logic to the PC version, it *also* has to be playtested with crossplay on the xbox version.
I dont know how much you know about testing - but testing multiple platforms takes longer time than testing only PC.

One could make the argument this will make the release of other platforms faster later (shared code libraries across platforms etc.) , but it will slow down the initial release of the pc version without doubt.

Questions?

Originally posted by Madmod:

Questions?

Will you edit your OP to be a bit more correct and less accusatory now that you know better?

In the end, it's an Early Access title and the development is up for changes. Releasing it for X-Box is well within reason and what they're allowed to do. IGS has made it clear that this shouldn't effect the development of the main game to any larger degree. If it does effect it to some degree - well then it does. Getting the game to work on Steam deck might have taken some time too.

We aren't investors in the development. We just bought an unfinished game. We can suggest things or complain, but it's not about 'us spending money for them to finish the game' according to our wishes.

TLDR: Another unwarranted overreaction from someone who didn't bother to read any of the news postings or updates posted to steam, discord, nor twitter because they saw something and immediately formulated an alternate reality where they don't like what the devs are doing.

Isn't xbox just a PC with specific hardware and a dumbed down version of embedded windows?

Originally posted by Madmod:

I bought the game in early access because I wanted to support the development of the game because it was good and seemed like it had a lot of potential.

Now, it seems the studio has decided to focus on releasing the game on Xbox- before the game is finnised on PC.

I'm sorry. I spent my money for you to finnish the game on PC, ON STEAM. The store page says nothing about the game development spending our funding to focus on other platforms first.

The latest blog post said Valheim is about to or ready to be released on Xbox. What's next, Playstation before final release?

Respect your early access buyers on PC. We dont need you to slow down development by supporting multiple platforms. It's not what we bought the game in early access for.

Making an Xbox version would be extremely easy. They just need their code to be compatible with what Xbox works with, which is a modified version of windows, as others have previously stated, and they're just adjusting stuff to make it work as best as possible on that hardware. That's all. That's not going to take a long time. If this was a title that was developed for consoles, and then had to be adapted to PC, that takes more time. Don't ask me how or why, it is just faster to code from PC to Xbox than say, PS5 or Xbox S to PC.

Originally posted by jonnin:

Isn't xbox just a PC with specific hardware and a dumbed down version of embedded windows?

yes, so it's not going to take a long time. They will have Xbox devs helping them out and the port will happen quite quickly.

They also said the x-box development isn't taking anything away from game development. x-boxes are basically PCs anyway, more admin and licensing has to be done than development.

This post is nothing but entitlement. Mistlands turned out great, hearth and home was awesome, the frost caves was awesome. They're taking their time and not releasing rubbish. It's really unfair to say they dont respect us. You should really look at them on a more personal level and stop being so ungrateful.

It's a small team of I think, 7 people now, that are throwing their heart and soul into it only to have you sh!t all over them because you dont understand their business and the game isnt coming fast enough for you.

People that complain about this game and the devs need to take a long hard look at themselves.

GPU problems still 99% overheating

Personally I can say I have gotten more than my money's worth out of the game already so anything more is gravy when looked at cost-play wise.

I don't know about the xbox console(s), but it's also on xbox "PC". I... have complained to them before that we're locked into Steam, I think because Steam Cloud is a steaming pile of ♥♥♥♥. So if Valheim is coming to more PC distributors that is IMO a good thing - I would even consider transferring my PC ownership away from Steam if it were an option.

From PC to console conversions, there is almost always a third party involved in order to avoid delays. Makes perfect sense, really.

You aren't funding anything. You just bought a game for the low price of $20(US). And you are about a year and a half late to the show. This dev team probably increased the Swedish national GDP a point or two on their very own having sold over 8 Million copies when it first came out. Their speed of development is their choice. We are merely purchasers of the early access game they choose to give us. We have no power, they already have our money.
It's a great game for those of us that are more journey oriented, can spent way too many thousands of hours on it, even unfinished. If you are in a rush, play through and come back with the next update, easy squeezie.

Nothing really wrong with that kinda opinion, but is there any evidence of development slowing down due to console release? The Xbox OS is based on Windows after all, and Valheim isn't an indie game. Many games, early access or no, are eventually released on multiple platforms.

Don't buy early access games if you don't wish to suffer unexpected outcomes or changes.

It's true unexpected outcomes or changes should be expected with Early Access. However, that unexpectedness is something you can expect in terms of the gameplay (for example a strange gameplay tweak or weird new gameplay feature). I'd like to make the claim that using early access money to publish your game on another platform - where your early access backers is *not* present is NOT one of the things that can be considered valid "unexpected changes". After a full release I will be fine with it, but we have all supported them to finish the game, not publish it to xbox.

There is also no words on the store site on steam indicating they're using time on xbox development.

Not to mention, the xbox release will also make development slower before a final release. Playtesting, performance etc. will now also have to be tuned for xbox. I'd argue its unethical and at best bad judgement from the studio.

When releasing to different platforms, it will always be work required to adapt to the platforms requirement and systems. One simple example is support for controllers. Another one is graphical rework of textures and assets to fit the standard the platform have.

Originally posted by Madmod:

I'd like to make the claim that using early access money to publish your game on another platform - where your early access backers is *not* present is NOT one of the things that can be considered valid "unexpected changes".

Early access isn't Kickstarter or some other type of crowdfunding. You purchase a game that is already playable and enjoyable albeit not complete yet. We're not "backing" anything, even if the border between that and purchasing early access to a game can seem to be or sometimes is a line in the sand.

I chatted with a developer on discord about this, and while a xbox release is beeing worked on, it is supposedly beeing worked on by another company (Piktiv?).
Also they promised they would never delay the pc development just to match the xbox development (atleast not until it (xbox) is released).

Seems things were not as bad as I thought, for the moment.