Coffee Stain Publishing

1:44:01 Coffee Stain Publishing is the publishing arm of Coffee Stain, the Swedish games company that also makes Goat Simulator and Satisfactory. It has published Valheim on every storefront since the game's early-access debut on Feb 2, 2021 and is still the credited publisher on Steam after Valheim 1.0 Release. Coffee Stain does not own the game: the intellectual property and creative control belong to Iron Gate Studio, in which Coffee Stain holds a 30 per cent minority stake. Chief executive Anton Westbergh calls Valheim the best-performing title in the group's portfolio and "one of the games that we publish", not one it owns.

Quick facts

Origins in Skövde

19:47 Coffee Stain Studios was founded in 2010 in Skövde, a small city in western Sweden, by nine students from the University of Skövde, Anton Westbergh among them. Iron Gate was later founded in the same town, which is why Westbergh describes it as "a small studio coming out of Skövde, the same city as Coffee Stain started". The studio's first releases were the tower-defense shooters Sanctum (2011) and Sanctum 2 (2013) (Wikipedia).

20:15 The break came in April 2014 with Goat Simulator, a physics joke that went viral through YouTubers and streamers in the early days of games influencers. It earned around $12 million by 2016 and gave the founders the capital to grow (Wikipedia). Coffee Stain then built Satisfactory, its first-person factory game, which entered early access in 2019 and reached 1.0 in September 2024.

The publishing label

20:57 With the Goat Simulator money, Westbergh says, "we wanted to make more", and that led to the decision to start a publishing business. Coffee Stain Publishing was announced on Feb 23, 2017 with two external games: Huntdown, a pixel-art action game by Easy Trigger Games, and Deep Rock Galactic, the co-operative dwarf-mining shooter by Ghost Ship Games of Copenhagen (Wikipedia). The Deep Rock deal came bundled with a 30 per cent investment in Ghost Ship, which set the pattern for everything that followed: Coffee Stain calls the business "publishing and partnerships", prefers to be "sitting in the same boat" with a developer through a minority share, and leaves the studio in charge of its own game. In Ghost Ship's case the relationship grew until Coffee Stain acquired the whole studio in August 2021.

5:00 The label is a separate company from the development studio, and the naming confuses players. Coffee Stain Studios in Skövde makes only Satisfactory, while Coffee Stain Publishing, run from Stockholm, handles the group's own games as well as external titles such as Deep Rock Galactic and Valheim; Valheim questions sent to the Satisfactory team are, as its community manager put it, something "we can't help you with, because we don't make those games".

Finding Valheim

2:02 Valheim reached Coffee Stain through its scout Sebastian Badylak, who later became the game's executive producer on the publishing side. In early 2018 Badylak saw Richard Svensson posting on Facebook about a prototype called Fejd, Swedish for a blood feud; it was "super rough and super simple" but had "all the key ingredients", and he messaged Svensson to say that Coffee Stain was now a publisher and could probably help. Fejd was renamed Valheim in May 2018, and the Steam page went up that October (Development History).

1:47:35 When Coffee Stain began working with Iron Gate, Westbergh recalls, "it was actually only Richard", one person who had built most of the game himself. The two sides agreed that Iron Gate would take on a few more people and that they would polish the game together up to release. Henrik Törnqvist, who had worked with Svensson before, joined as co-founder; the company was incorporated in 2019 and the publishing deal followed soon after (Sirus Gaming).

1:51:10 The Iron Gate arrangement is the clearest example of the partnership model. Coffee Stain "went in with a small investment into the company at the early stage" and owns 30 per cent, while Iron Gate keeps the IP and all creative control. Westbergh has said a traditional publishing contract would probably not have appealed to Svensson at all. The stake became public in February 2021, when a Coffee Stain Holding annual report was noticed during the launch frenzy (Wikipedia).

Launch and the early-access years

6:02 Coffee Stain announced the Feb 2, 2021 early-access date in January 2021 and coordinated the launch, with everyone pressing "all the buttons at once". The publishing team had made projections for the first week's sales; Badylak's forecast was passed within two hours. Valheim sold a million copies in its first week and five million within a month, and set a Steam concurrent-player record of 502,387 that still stands (Reception and Sales).

1:05 Publisher and developer announce sales milestones jointly. On Apr 25, 2022 they reported 10 million copies, with Albert Säfström, Coffee Stain's vice president of publishing, calling the first year of early access "an immense privilege" to have shared "by Iron Gate's side" (Game Developer). By November 2025 the total was over 16 million, and the June 2026 release-date announcement came with a figure of more than 17 million (GamesBeat).

1:49:02 Coffee Stain's practical role during early access was platform work: bringing Valheim to Xbox and the Microsoft Store in March 2023, funding the technology behind Cross-Play, and lining up external consultants where the small Iron Gate team needed them. Royalties flow the other way: Coffee Stain pays Iron Gate its share once the storefronts have paid Coffee Stain (2:06:11 Capital Markets Event, 2:06:11).

The Embracer years

21:36 On Nov 14, 2018 THQ Nordic AB, the Karlstad group run by Lars Wingefors, agreed to buy all of Coffee Stain Holding AB together with the 30 per cent of Coffee Stain Publishing AB that sat outside the holding company. The upfront price was SEK 392 million, SEK 317 million on a cash-and-debt-free basis, with earn-outs of up to SEK 535 million payable in shares (Embracer Group press release). Westbergh's account is that the nine founders had run the company together for years, some wanted to move on, and "it became very important to find a good new home". THQ Nordic renamed itself Embracer Group in September 2019 (Wikipedia).

5:02 Coffee Stain was the first acquisition after Jacob Jonmyren, later its chair, joined the Embracer board in May 2018; he calls it a "hallmark acquisition" and a showcase of Embracer's decentralised model. Under Embracer the company kept its management, reinvested most of its cash flow in new studios and acquisitions (Coffee Stain Malmö and Welcome to Bloxburg in 2022 among them), and grew from two IPs to six core franchises (Wikipedia).

Coffee Stain Group

6:52 Embracer, after a debt-driven restructuring that shed studios and thousands of jobs, announced on May 22, 2025 that it would split into three listed companies. Coffee Stain Group AB was distributed to Embracer shareholders and began trading on Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market in Stockholm on Dec 11, 2025 under the ticker COFFEE B, with a pro-forma net cash position of SEK 500 million (Embracer Group). Jonmyren's rationale is that each company can execute its own strategy and attract its own kind of shareholder; Westbergh calls independence "the third iteration of Coffee Stain" after the start-up and Embracer years.

17:07 At listing the group had about 250 people across 13 development studios of five to thirty people each, two publishing entities (Coffee Stain Publishing and Ghost Ship's own), and a small parent company. Its core franchises are Goat Simulator, Satisfactory, Deep Rock Galactic, Valheim, Teardown (via Tuxedo Labs, brought in during 2025) and Welcome to Bloxburg; Fellowship, an Arc Games project, was taken over just before the spin-off. Anton Westbergh is chief executive, Erik Sunnerdahl chief financial officer and Jacob Jonmyren chair; Lars Wingefors sits on the board (Coffee Stain Group).

2:23 The model is deliberately decentralised, with each team controlling its own IP, and the first casualty of that principle came quickly. In April 2026, less than six months after listing, the group closed Coffee Stain Malmö, its 17-person mobile studio, and canceled a project in development there; Westbergh told investors the studio's way of working "was going a little bit against our core philosophy", and Goat Simulator's mobile work moved to Coffee Stain North (Game Developer).

Valheim 1.0 and after

9:59 Valheim's full release on Sep 9, 2026 was the group's biggest launch of its first independent year: version 1.0 with the Deep North arrived simultaneously on PC, Xbox, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2, the last two being new platforms ported by Piktiv (Platforms and System Requirements). The price rose from $19.99 to $29.99, a step Coffee Stain had already taken with Satisfactory at its own 1.0.

3:06:51 What comes after 1.0 is, by the terms of the partnership, not the publisher's decision. Asked about future Valheim content, Westbergh pointed out that IP ownership and creative control sit with Iron Gate, so "the Iron Gate team will set the course". Iron Gate has said there will be no Valheim 2 but that it wants to keep making Valheim content; Coffee Stain's stated intention is to keep supporting the game "for a long time". Independence changes little for Valheim in practice: the same Stockholm publishing team, the same 30 per cent, and a developer in Skövde that still owns its game.

Frequently asked questions

Who publishes Valheim? Coffee Stain Publishing, on every storefront since the early-access debut of Feb 2, 2021, and still the credited publisher on Steam after the Valheim 1.0 Release.

Does Coffee Stain own Valheim? No. Iron Gate Studio holds the intellectual property and all creative control; Coffee Stain owns a 30 per cent minority stake in the company, bought at an early stage.

Is Coffee Stain Publishing the same as Coffee Stain Studios? No. They are separate companies: the Skövde studio makes only Satisfactory, while the publishing label, run from Stockholm, handles the group's own games and external titles such as Deep Rock Galactic and Valheim.

Is Coffee Stain still part of Embracer? No. THQ Nordic, later Embracer Group, bought Coffee Stain in November 2018, and Coffee Stain Group AB was distributed to Embracer shareholders and began trading in Stockholm on Dec 11, 2025.

Who decides what happens to Valheim after 1.0? Iron Gate. Because the IP and creative control sit with the developer, chief executive Anton Westbergh says "the Iron Gate team will set the course"; Coffee Stain's stated intention is to keep supporting the game "for a long time".

Sources

• Coffee Stain Studios, Wikipedia
• Coffee Stain Group Capital Markets Event 2025, Embracer Group (YouTube, Nov 20, 2025)
• Coffee Stain Group Q4 & FY 2025/26 Report Presentation, Coffee Stain Group (YouTube, May 12, 2026)
• The success of Valheim and the people behind it all, Embracer Group (YouTube, Sep 2, 2021)
• Did we make ANY of these games?!, Coffee Stain Studios (YouTube, Mar 3, 2023)
• THQ Nordic acquires Coffee Stain, Embracer Group press release, Nov 14, 2018
• Coffee Stain Group spin-off, Embracer Group investor page
• Coffee Stain Group publishes company description in connection with listing, Embracer Group, Dec 8, 2025
• Senior Executives, Coffee Stain Group
• Valheim, Coffee Stain Group game page
• Goat Simulator maker Coffee Stain shutters Malmö studio, Game Developer, Apr 2, 2026
• Valheim has sold 10 million copies in just over a year, Game Developer, Apr 25, 2022
• Valheim finally hits 1.0 after five years in early access, GamesBeat, Sep 8, 2026
• Valheim's explosive success was built from little to no income, Sirus Gaming, Mar 29, 2021
• Embracer Group, Wikipedia
• Valheim on Steam, Valve (publisher credit)