Assassin's Creed Valhalla Is Series' "Biggest Game Launch In History"

Assassins' Creed Valhalla, the Viking-era open-world action-adventure game, has "sold through more units in its first week" than any other entry in the long-running franchise. According to Ubisoft, Valhalla has had the biggest Assassin's Creed game launch in history.

The game is also the biggest launch on PC for a Ubisoft game. The company said in a press release that Assassin's Creed Valhalla has become the "top-selling Ubisoft PC launch ever."

Ubisoft provided no metrics for how well Assassin's Creed Valhalla is doing, nor did it specify whether these impressive sales were due to digital or physical sell-through. Ubisoft shared the same sort of sentiment last year when Odyssey launched, saying the Greek-era open-world action-adventure game outpaced Origins' first-week sales. The last game in the franchise that was a big splash, however, was Assassin's Creed III with 3.5 million units sold in its first week.

Ubisoft did promote other statistics, namely related to the player experience. Valhalla players covered over four million kilometers, unlocked more than 55 million buildings for their settlements, played over 3.5 million games of Orlog (the dice-rolling mini-game), and won more than 1.8 million flyting contests (Viking-style poetry slams battles) against NPCs.

Critical consensus of the game has been pretty favorable. We scored it an 8/10 in our Assassin's Creed Valhalla review, saying, "It takes a little while to build momentum, but when it hits its stride, Valhalla is a confident Assassin's Creed title that takes a few narrative risks which, as a whole, pay off."