Vermintide II: Winds Of Magic

Warhammer: Vermintide II was so successful that it took its small swedish developer by surprise.

After the strong sales and critical acclaim came bug reports and complaints, missteps, and demands.

Its community is hungry for more, and—after a year of making adjustments and laying infrastructure— fatshark is ready to deliver.

With Vermintide II: Winds Of Magic, the endgame has arrived.

- Phil Savage

It’s easy to get carried away,” says CEO Martin Wahlund. “You’re proud of the game, you’re proud of the reviews, and then suddenly you get scared as well. People are playing it!” After Vermintide II’s release, Wahlund found himself reacting to every bug report and complaint. At one point he messaged the team late at night because of an error report that, upon investigation, was down to the player’s own internet connection being down.

Some of the game’s early patches didn’t receive enough testing, causing them to break other parts of the game. “It’s such a bad experience for the player,” says Wahlund. “If you’re playing, and starting a career and using a certain weapon, and we break that weapon or break that career, it’s like we ruined it.”

“We had some bad experiences in the beginning where we were a bit too eager and released [an update] a bit too early,” says Mårten Stormdal, executive producer of Vermintide II. “We didn’t have time to test properly, and we got some bad publicity for it. It was right because we didn’t do our work properly, but that has made us a bit more cautious.”

“More professional,” says Wahlund.

Fatshark slowed down and took stock of where they were and where they wanted to go. “We worked on the infrastructure,” says Wahlund. “We needed to think about where we want to be in five years because we want to build a game that people can play for a long time. We needed to do some organizational change internally and figure out how we handle a game that will live for many years.”