Iron Gate Studio

0:47 Iron Gate Studio, registered as Iron Gate AB, is the independent Swedish developer of Valheim. It is based in Skövde in the province of Västergötland and was founded by Richard Svensson, who is its CEO, and Henrik Törnqvist. The company describes itself as small and independent: its own site lists sixteen people working both remotely and from the office, while the founders' stated ambition is to remain small and independent. Valheim, the studio's only released game, went from a one-man networking experiment in 2017 to an early-access hit in 2021 and to a finished game with the Valheim 1.0 Release on Sep 9, 2026. Publishing, funding and the corporate history of its publisher are covered on Coffee Stain Publishing.

0:02 (Y)OUR JOURNEY

Quick facts

Founding

0:52 Valheim began as a side project of Richard Svensson, who had started building a networking backend and needed a game to test it on. According to Wikipedia, he began work in 2017 under the working title Fejd (Swedish for "feud"), put an early build on itch.io, and in 2018 left his job at the Skövde studio Pieces Interactive to work on it full-time. Before Fejd he had spent his spare time on an unreleased simulation game called Tolroko, and Törnqvist has said that the lesson Svensson drew from it, that simulation for its own sake is redundant unless it serves the player, shaped Valheim's design. The Development History page follows the game itself from that prototype onward.

2:02 In early 2018 a scout at Coffee Stain, which had just started publishing other studios' games, noticed Svensson posting Fejd screenshots on Facebook and offered help; Törnqvist, who had worked with Svensson before, decided it was the right time to quit his own job and join him as co-founder. The two had studied Game Development at the University of Skövde from 2004, Törnqvist on the design track and Svensson on programming, and they started Iron Gate through Science Park Skövde's start-up program for games (Sweden Game Arena). Both are described on the studio's site as industry veterans who had worked on Magicka 2 and the Titan Quest series at Pieces Interactive.

The company itself was incorporated in April 2019, after the game had already been in development for two years as a solo project, which is why Iron Gate's own materials give the founding year as 2019 while its about page says 2018. Its website was originally irongatestudio.se, which now redirects to irongate.se.

Skövde and the size of the team

13:33 Valheim launched into early access in February 2021 with a team of five. Törnqvist described the line-up that year: Svensson as programmer, creator and lead designer, himself as "the other lead designer", one artist doing all the visuals, a second designer hired when Törnqvist ran out of time for design work, and community manager Lisa Kolfjord. The studio had just moved into a larger office in Skövde that it had not yet had time to unpack, and said it would need to hire but intended to grow slowly.

1:57 Iron Gate does not use formal job titles. Programmer Jonathan Smårs, the studio's second coder after Svensson, calls himself "lead tinkerer" and says everyone works as a generalist on whatever needs the most attention.

14:39 Törnqvist said in 2021 that the studio would "grow slowly", hiring only to fill gaps in competence even as job applications poured in, and that is what happened. The figures reported for the studio's size vary with what is being counted. Iron Gate's site lists sixteen people, its FAQ notes that not everyone is a developer directly involved in Valheim, and in a Gamescom 2026 interview Kolfjord and Andreas Tomasson said the core team had grown from five at launch to eight. Kolfjord told GamesBeat the studio had "always liked the idea of being a small company", and the FAQ states that Iron Gate is not hiring and does not take interns.

0:01 Part of the work is done outside the studio. The Soundtrack is by the composer Patrik Jarlestam; creature audio for the Mistlands Update was made by the audio studio Ghost to Empire, whose designer explains on Iron Gate's channel how the Gjall's roar was built from a pitched-down vocal and seal grunts; the Deep North animated trailer was produced with Brikk Animation; and the console versions were ported by Piktiv (see Platforms and System Requirements).

Key staff

1:26 Robin "Grimmcore" Eyre is Valheim's art director and creative lead, the person most often quoted on the game's direction in recent years. Andreas "Lumaaah" Tomasson combines design, QA and production; PCGamesN calls him producer and GamesBeat QA manager and lead designer. Eyre and Tomasson are also the developers who most often appear at conventions and on community streams.

2:11 Lisa Kolfjord started as community manager after studying animation at the University of Skövde and joined in autumn 2020, before launch; by 2026 she was working as a 3D artist and is credited as senior artist. Community management passed to Josefin, who also hosts the studio's "Walk & Talk" videos.

0:02 The studio talks to players directly through its own channel: Fireside Chats after the Hearth & Home Update and at the one-year anniversary, the three-part "Making the Ashlands" Walk & Talk series before the Ashlands Update, and the (Y)OUR JOURNEY retrospective released two days before 1.0.

Ownership

2:46 Iron Gate is majority-owned by its founders. Coffee Stain, which had approached Svensson in 2018, took a 30% minority stake in February 2021, the month Valheim launched; the stake sat inside Coffee Stain Holding and therefore, until the December 2025 spin-off, inside Embracer Group, which produced a mini-documentary about the studio in 2021. Coffee Stain Group became an independent listed company again in December 2025. The publishing relationship, the stake and that corporate history are on Coffee Stain Publishing.

How the studio works

8:14 Törnqvist has said the team had "a pretty clear vision of Valheim since day one" and that it has not changed much. In a February 2021 interview he named Skyrim and Zelda rather than survival games as the main influences and summarized the design rule as simulation being subordinate to gameplay: hunger rewards eating rather than punishing starvation. Suggestions that would turn Valheim into a different game are the ones the studio declines; the rest, including the combat overhaul of the Call to Arms Update, came from community requests.

23:08 The studio does not work to public deadlines. Smårs told an interviewer in 2023 that Iron Gate was in a position to "work on it until we feel that this is done" rather than rush a date, and the answer to when the Deep North would arrive was "when it's ready" until the release date was announced on Jun 7, 2026. Major updates were normally tested on a public-test branch first; 1.0 was not, and the same build shipped on every platform at once.

Side projects

Two projects by Iron Gate staff exist outside the company. Begraved is a first-person co-op dungeon crawler about tomb raiders in debt to "the Taxman", made by Grip Jaw, a studio formed by Eyre, Tomasson and Emilia Oscarsson; the three worked on it "in the evenings and on weekends", released a free Steam demo in February 2026, and describe it as fully independent of Coffee Stain. Starpath is a starship-building survival game that Jonathan Smårs is developing and publishing alone; its Steam page went up in May 2026 with the release date "to be announced". Eyre has said he remains dedicated to Valheim every day.

Statements about the future

3:39 Asked by Jade PG in June 2025 whether DLC or expansions would follow the Deep North, Eyre and Tomasson answered that they were making "a game that has an ending" and would not plan further ahead until 1.0 was done. Closer to launch that answer firmed up: in a Gamescom 2026 interview, published on Sep 6, Eyre said the studio had asked its community about a sequel and that there will be no Valheim 2, because players "really, really want more content for Valheim". Iron Gate's 1.0 FAQ commits only to bug fixes and quality-of-life work after launch, and the Ocean received no update in 1.0.

Three weeks after launch the studio went a step further. Its "Word from the Devs: What a Month!" of Sep 30, 2026 said that there are "more content updates coming", without revealing what they will be, while bug-fixing and balancing patches continue (six by Oct 6; see Patches Since 1.0). The same post announced that Valheim is "entering the world of comic books" in 2027 and that Valheim concerts will be held in Stockholm and Paris in 2027, with tickets and more cities to follow; it rounded up new merchandise (a second Kickstarter with Heroic Replicas, scented candles from Cantrip Candles and a limited Makeship hoodie) and said its developer posts would no longer be monthly (Iron Gate, Word from the Devs: What a Month!). The concerts are covered on Soundtrack.

The comic is billed on Valheim's site as a saga of five issues, from writers including Tanner Orel, Tim Sheridan and Steve Orlando and artists including Vanesa Del Rey (Valheim: Comic Book Saga). The same page previews three colored pages, whose narration names Grom, son of Hask, and a promised seat in Valhalla.

34:27 The studio's stated plan has been consistent since the Xbox launch in 2023, when Smårs described the roadmap as Ashlands, then Deep North, then 1.0, with "hopefully tons of more things to do" after that. Ideas Eyre has floated over the years, such as an underworld, remain speculation.

8:22 The retrospective published for 1.0 closes with the studio's own framing: the end of the early-access journey is "the start of the next book". Sales and player figures are on Reception and Sales.

Frequently asked questions

Who made Valheim? Iron Gate Studio, a small independent developer in Skövde, Sweden, founded by Richard Svensson and Henrik Törnqvist. Svensson began the game alone in 2017 as a side project under the working title Fejd, while building a networking backend he needed a game to test.

How many people work at Iron Gate? The studio's site lists sixteen people working remotely and from the office, but not all of them work directly on Valheim: at Gamescom 2026 the studio put the core team at eight, against five when early access began in 2021. The FAQ says Iron Gate is not hiring and does not take interns.

Will there be a Valheim 2? No. Art director Robin Eyre said in 2026 that the studio had asked its community about a sequel and that there will be no Valheim 2, because players want more content for Valheim instead. On Sep 30, 2026 Iron Gate wrote that more content updates are coming, without saying what they will be.

Does Coffee Stain own Iron Gate? No. Iron Gate is majority-owned by its founders; Coffee Stain, which publishes Valheim, took a 30% minority stake in February 2021 (Coffee Stain Publishing).

What else is Iron Gate working on? Nothing as a company. Two projects exist beside it: Begraved, a first-person co-op dungeon crawler by Grip Jaw, the side studio of Robin Eyre, Andreas Tomasson and Emilia Oscarsson, and Starpath, a starship-building survival game that Jonathan Smårs develops and publishes alone.

Sources

• About Iron Gate, Iron Gate Studio
• Valheim FAQ, Iron Gate Studio
• Press, Iron Gate Studio
• Word from the Devs: What a Month!, Iron Gate Studio, Sep 30, 2026
• Valheim: Comic Book Saga, Iron Gate Studio
• Valheim: (Y)OUR JOURNEY, Iron Gate (YouTube), Sep 7, 2026
• The success of Valheim and the people behind it all, Embracer Group (YouTube), Sep 2, 2021
• Valheim on Xbox: Iron Gate's Jonathan Smårs on Survival, Biomes & Crossplay, The Expansion Pass (YouTube), Mar 14, 2023
• Valheim 1.0 & Deep North 2026! Developers Interview!, Jade PG (YouTube), Jun 7, 2025
• There won't be a Valheim 2, but there will be more Valheim, Iron Gate says, PCGamesN, Sep 6, 2026
• Valheim finally hits 1.0 after five years in early access | interview, GamesBeat, Sep 8, 2026
• Valheim, Wikipedia
• Coffee Stain Studios, Wikipedia
• Former Skövde students behind the global success Valheim, Sweden Game Arena, Mar 25, 2021
• Valheim Draws From Skyrim and Zelda, Devs Explain, Gamepressure, Feb 19, 2021
• Valheim devs have been working on a first-person co-op dungeon-crawler 'in the evenings and on weekends', PC Gamer via Yahoo, Feb 9, 2026
• Valheim's creative director is still 'dedicated on Valheim every day', PC Gamer, Feb 17, 2026
• Starpath, Steam
• Valheim Will Be Coming To PS5 In 2026, Worthplaying, Sep 16, 2025