Skövde, a town of roughly 58,000 in western Sweden, has an improbable claim on gaming history. Valheim, the Viking survival game built by a five-person team, sold over 12 million copies. Goat Simulator turned a physics joke into a global meme. Satisfactory turned factory-building into a genre staple. V Rising made vampire survival feel fresh. All of them were made here.
Now the town has a permanent monument to that run. Skövde’s Walk of Game — a Hollywood Walk of Fame-style installation set into the pavements along Rådhusgatan in the town centre — honours games that reached at least 3 million copies sold (or 15 million downloads for free titles) with at least half their development hours logged in the town. The latest inductee, announced this week, is RV There Yet, the chaotic co-op road-trip game that sold over two million copies in its first week.
Five Games, Five Bronze Plaques
The Walk of Game launched in October 2024 during the Sweden Game Conference, with municipal council chair Theres Sahlström leading the inauguration. Five games received bronze plaques set into the pavement:
- Goat Simulator (Coffee Stain Studios, 2014) — the game jam prototype that recouped its development costs within minutes of launch and sold over 2.5 million copies by January 2015.
- Raft (Redbeet Interactive, 2022) — ocean survival that grew from a student project into a million-seller.
- Satisfactory (Coffee Stain Studios, 2024) — the first-person factory builder that defined a genre.
- Valheim (Iron Gate Studio, 2021) — the Viking survival phenomenon that hit 502,000 concurrent players on Steam.
- V Rising (Stunlock Studios, 2024) — vampire survival that blended base-building with isometric combat.
RV There Yet joins the list as the sixth inductee, recognised for its rapid ascent during the “friendslop” wave — a term for rough-around-the-edges co-op games that prioritise chaotic fun over polish.
A Town Built on Game Development
Skövde’s gaming ecosystem didn’t emerge by accident. The University of Skövde runs 12 degree programmes in game development with roughly 500 students enrolled, feeding a regional cluster of 156 studios. Coffee Stain Studios, Iron Gate and Stunlock all grew from the same incubator pipeline — the Sweden Game Startup programme connected to the university and Science Park Skövde.
Criteria: To qualify for the Walk of Game, a title must have sold 3 million copies (or reached 15 million downloads), have at least 50% of its development hours completed in Skövde, and be an original IP.
The numbers underscore how outsized Skövde’s influence is relative to its size. Valheim was made by five people and has generated over $177 million in Steam revenue. Goat Simulator began as an internal joke and became a cultural touchstone. The town’s studios have collectively shipped titles that account for tens of millions of sales across multiple genres.
RV There Yet: From Game Jam to Pavement in Two Months
The newest inductee represents a different path to success. RV There Yet was developed in under two months and launched into a market hungry for affordable co-op experiences. Players work together to navigate a massive RV along increasingly absurd roads, and the game’s rough charm resonated — two million copies in a week, with the developers capturing the moment a real car first drove over their bronze plaque.
“RV There Yet? has been immortalised into the ground in our town of Skövde, Sweden! Along with the other incredible games from here as part of the Walk of Game. Also we captured the first vehicle to drive over it.” — RV There Yet developers
The Walk of Game is open-air and free to visit along Rådhusgatan in central Skövde. New plaques will be added as local studios hit the sales thresholds — and given the town’s track record, it’s likely only a matter of time.
Sweden’s Gaming Footprint
Skövde is one of four major Swedish game development clusters alongside Stockholm (DICE, Mojang, King), Malmö (Massive Entertainment, Tarsier Studios) and Gothenburg (Thunderful). Nationally, the Swedish games industry generates roughly 35 billion SEK annually, with mobile titles alone bringing in over $1 billion per year.
But Skövde’s story is distinct: a town small enough that everyone in the industry knows each other, producing hits that compete with studios a hundred times its size. The Walk of Game is both a celebration and a signal — a message to the students currently finishing their game design degrees that the path from classroom to multimillion-selling studio is shorter than it looks.
For visitors, the plaques are a quirky pilgrimage stop. For the developers who walk past them daily, they’re a reminder that the town’s name is now permanently attached to some of the most distinctive games of the past decade.
