I can see your point but I must append a very big "Yes, but" to it. That is, despite what one may see on the Steam store page or what players may say in the forums, I don't think Valheim is a survival game.

For one thing, in the introduction before one is initially spawned into the Valheim world, one is not told that one's purpose is to survive in this new environment, but to conquer it for Odin. There is no indication he expects a viking to succeed in any given length of time.

For another, basic survival is not a problem by any stretch of the imagination. One does not have to eat, drink, or even rest to survive. The initial enemies a viking may actually have to fight, boar and greylings, are not exactly world beaters. The only pressure to face any real threat is self-imposed.

To put it another way, it is fairly easy for a viking to get into a situation where his or her posterior gets sliced, diced, fricasseed and handed back. It is also easy for a viking to avoid such situations. Trouble does not come looking for a viking; a viking must go looking for it.

The only way I would count Valheim as a survival game is if I joined a server with a pristine viking, no skills and just a rag tunic. A server on which earlier players had already stirred up raids and events and the spawning of non-native creatures in the Meadows biome.