Vampire survival game V Rising sells a million and adds offline mode

V Rising leather guide
(Image credit: Stunlock Studios)

Vampire survival game V Rising has been causing buzz since launch, and now developer Stunlock Studios has announced that the early access fang-em-up has sold a million copies. The figure was revealed exactly a week after the game's launch, so it's fair to say this one doesn't suck.

V Rising definitely lands square in the middle of a particular Steam Venn diagram: it's a survival game, open world, it's got base-building and crafting, PvPvE, solo play, co-op... look, vampires are cool alright. Not that concurrent players are a particularly good measure of anything, but at its peak today the vampire sim had just under 130,000 people playing at the same time.

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As well as the sales milestone, developer Stunlock today released a hotfix adding an offline mode (patch notes here), the lack of which had been bothering some folk. So now you can just focus on building a beautiful gothic mansion without any pesky players coming in to ruin things and spill blood all over the carpet—which does feel like something a vampire would want.

Seriously though: is V Rising any good? Fraser thinks it's more than just Valheim with vampires and, appropriately enough, it kept him up all night. Some aren't quite so keen on the grind side of it, though it's sitting pretty on Steam with just under 14,000 reviews that average out at 'very positive'.

If you're thinking of jumping into V Rising, we've got a few guides for beginners: learn how V Rising's blood essence works, plus how to craft leather, where to get stone bricks, and how to find whetstones.

Rich Stanton

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."