Swipe Right

Coffee Stain: Valheim launch

Transforming an Early Access indie into GOTY Contender

We raised the global sales of Coffee Stain’s viking indie. From a one man studio with no marketing budget, we steered the early access saga to the most watched game on Twitch, shifting 6 million units in under a month.

One of the first games from Coffee Stain Publishing, Swipe Right was tasked with securing global fame for the Steam Early Access launch of the indie survival game. Shortly after launch Valheim overtook giants like CS:GO and Dota 2 as the most watched game on Twitch, and broke concurrent player records set by the likes of GTA V. Whilst the Valheim fever came seemingly overnight, Swipe Right had been curating its success for over a year.

The brainchild of a genius solo developer at Iron Gate Studio, as a survival game steeped in Norse mythology Valheim was entering a saturated market. We undertook extensive market research, creating messaging that would set it apart and make its USPs shine; curated global audits of press and content creators, built bespoke tactics for each, and enlisted local agencies in Japan and LATAM where we recognised its potential to excel.

We began outreach to content creators and press months prior to launch, including creating bespoke hand wrapped press kits with viking helmets to our top 10 global targets. Calling in favours at every opportunity, we secured pre-launch content with the likes of BlitzKriegsler (3.24m Subs), Draegast (2.18M Subs) and DRHorse (670k subs), setting the game in motion to become the most watched game on Twitch, drawing in 188k concurrent viewers 2 weeks post launch.

We lined up global tier 1 gaming coverage to create a groundswell of visibility as our launch embargo lifted in the likes of IGN, GameSpot, Jeuxvideo and GameStar to name a few, laying the foundations for what was to follow.

As Valheim’s success spiralled we created a reactive strategy to highlight every success whilst building the profile of Coffee Stain and Iron Gate in features in mainstream media across the globe, alongside developing and managing their community strategy. One month post launch, we’d secured over 1000 pieces of positive coverage, organic YouTube lets plays with a combined subscriber count of over 108M (SRPR outreach only,) and countless Twitch streams, catapulting the previously unknown game to 6M sales.

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