I think Valheim is very fun and my 300+ hours support that. But I will never give it a 5/5 and I am probably going to reduce my 4/5 to a 3/5 because it does not support pause, a basic feature on 8-bit games 30 years ago.

The last time I played a (non-MMORPG) game without pause was Diablo 3, which I thought was terrible and caused me to never again buy a Blizzard game. But Blizzard is famous and was planning on monetizing every aspect of their game. What's Iron Gate's excuse?

I play single-player. Routinely, things happen, like a doorbell, or a phone ring, or a family member needing to talk to me. In all of those cases, I have to quit the game and spend a minute getting back in, then another minute running back to a base, then wait to regain my rested buff, and drink another resistance potion if applicable, then run back, etc etc. I do not understand why Iron Gate thinks it is funny when this happens twice an hour.

With Diablo 3, clearly, Blizzard stood to make more money when they hurt people playing SP so that they would play MP instead and spend more money. But I don't understand here. It seems like Iron Gate earns more when they make players suffer by not offering a pause button, but I don't see the mechanism. Can anyone enlighten me?