Across the history of PC gaming, plenty of genres have had the honor of being the most PC of genres—from the era of adventure games to the rise of FPSes—but the most PC gaming-ass genre of today is undeniably survival games. We are the birthplace and the proving ground for a style of game that just can't stop producing massive hits several times a year, so let's celebrate our time as tastemakers.
There were a few years there where, much as I'd enjoyed so many of them, I nearly got sick of the words "early access survival game." I was in a Minecraft slump, I never got quite into Ark, and I thought maybe it was time to just get over punching trees and organizing fleets of stone storage. Then Valheim launched in 2021, selling over 5 million copies in its first month of early access and sucking me and my friends in for over 100 hours.
