Valheim Discord servers locked after hacker releases virus

When we talk about popular open-world multiplayer survival games, the Norse mythology-inspired Valheim is among the favourites, but this latest news has caused some mayhem within its vibrant community.

Developed by the Sweden-based team at Iron Gate Studio and published by Coffee Stain Studios, Valheim was first released on PC in 2021 before sailing over to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One in March 2023. At this time, there is no Valheim PlayStation port despite the desire from its fanbase.

Check out the Valheim trailer below!

During its peak three years ago, Valheim enjoyed a whopping concurrent player base of 502,387. While those numbers have naturally dwindled over time, Valheim still garners a modest 33,487 concurrent players according to SteamDB. So, being such a popular game with high player numbers, when a virus is unleashed amongst its community, it can reap absolute havoc.

As reported by TryHardGuides, a virus was planted in the Valheim Discord server after “hackers” had taken over the forum on 29 January 2024. It was reported that hackers accessed administrator accounts to spread phishing links disguised as seemingly harmless links. The harmful links would open up malware called ‘Epsilon Stealer’ which would then access data and cookies from browsers which could not only be used to sneak into users accounts but also sold on the dark web.

“PSA: Valheim Discord got hacked,” read a statement posted by the developers on a Steam forum. “Time of incident: The breach began on 29th Jan. around 18:58 / 6:58pm CET and was stopped 10 minutes after. What happened: Multiple Discord accounts with admin permissions were hijacked. A phishing link was spammed containing an infected file. Additionally, an attempt was made to delete all channels and ban users. Current status: Iron Gate is working on restoring the Discord. Thank you for your patience.”

Thankfully, there is at least some good news to report, and that’s the Discord server has now been restored and is in control of the developers and moderators. “There is no longer any danger, you can join the Discord again using the old invite url .gg/valheim,” confirmed Iron Gate Studio. Hopefully, no one's accounts were compromised but if so, no lasting damage was inflicted.

Valheim is out now on PC and modern Xbox consoles.