this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 176 points 1 day ago (5 children)

And I'd say that it is 100% deserved. Stardew Valley is a once in a lifetime kind of game and has one of the best developers you could ask for. Free new content and updates for 10 years and it's still like $20 and frequently on sale. The developer actually tweeted out once that if he ever charged for new content that he'd want everyone to publicly shame him.

“I swear on the honor of my family name, i will never charge money for a DLC or update for as long as I live. Screencap this and shame me if I ever violate this oath.”

Stardew Valley is the gaming industry at its best and one of the best indie games out there.

[–] Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 42 points 1 day ago (2 children)

My only issue has always been that I cannot throw more money at the ape. So I buy the game for gaming-adjacent friends and almost always ~~ruin their lives~~ convert them

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

That's what I do too. I've bought it for all my friends or have convinced them to get it. Feels like I'm a drug dealer trying to push it on everyone I know lol.

[–] Bunbury@feddit.nl 6 points 12 hours ago

Couldn’t agree more. I’ve re-purchased the game for Switch and iOS after already having it on my PC for ages. I didn’t really want to play it on those platforms but just wanted to give more money to concerned ape.

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And at those prices I’ve bought it at least twice

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’ve bought it at least 5 times; sent it to a lot of family members.

[–] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Hehe yeah. To celebrate the recent patch increasing multiplayer to 8 people. We basically started like a DnD group sessions style of playthrough. We would meet weekly and play for like 8 hours at a time. Was pretty great.

[–] duchess@feddit.org 14 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Not that it should be expected to dish out free content and never charge for DLC. Not every game has the kind of profit margin Stardew Valley has.

[–] HelluvaKick@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Idk Stardew Valley is a passion project if I've ever seen one. Sure, concernedape is making extraordinary profits, but it has to feel way better to have a decent size of the planet's population playing and connecting with the project they poured their heart and soul into.

[–] duchess@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It‘s a passion project alright, but we won‘t see many games if only those are getting done.

[–] itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 hours ago

If there were 100x less games but they all had the passion of stardew behind them I think we'd come out ahead

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

But at the same time there are plenty of indie devs that sell games for $30 and then have a few $15 DLC on top of that after a few years. Not throwing shade at those other devs, more just saying that the dev for Stardew Valley could have sold DLC and nobody would have questioned it but chose not to. You could be like Stardew Valley and keep the game cheap, free updates, and frequent sales or you could be like Factorio and refuse to ever put your game on sale and up the price every couple of years and come out with a $20 DLC. And I'd be shocked if Stardew Valley has made less money than Factorio in the long run, especially with it being the in number one place right now.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 4 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

I think it's fair, and sometimes good. I've been playing Stationeers recently and it's fantastic. It's priced reasonably, and it's an amazing game. They have a few DLCs, which are purely there to give support, not new content. It's for you to pay the devs more if you have the money to give them and want to.

However, they're also losing money on the game and have said they never expect it to be profitable*. Most games aren't Stardew Valley, and they're struggling to survive. Stardew doesn't need to make more money. Most small/indie studios do.

*It's the studio making Kitten Space Agency, which they've said they want to be free, with the option to donate. I think they're allergic to making profit and only like making cool games. I'd highly recommend checking out their games, if only because they seem to be doing development for the sake of the games.

[–] duchess@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

And yet those small studios are one flop away from bankruptcy. Stardew Valley is a one in a million success story and should not pose as a benchmark. Barone decided to continue as a more or less single dev, but you can‘t blame talented young designers to expand their team to realize more ambitious projects and sacrifice economic safety for that simply because they now employ people. Barone can do updates ten years later and postpone Haunted Chocolatier for that, you can‘t do that if multiple people depend on their salary.

[–] SheeEttin@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Considering how much time he spent developing it, I doubt the profit margin is actually all that good.

[–] overload@sopuli.xyz 9 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Mate, it's one man, Self-published, pulling in the proceeds of a game that has sold 41 million copies. Even if he has made $5 per copy, that's over $200 million dollars. The profit margin on his time even after 10 years is insane.

[–] SheeEttin@lemmy.zip 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I didn't realize it had sold quite that many. I knew he spent a lot of time working on it, like 70 hours per week for 4.5 years, but that still works out to at least an enormous $12,000 an hour! Even if he kept at 70 hours/week for all ten years, it's still only half that number, far greater than you or I will likely ever see.

[–] overload@sopuli.xyz 8 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Steamcharts showed about 150,000 concurrent players playing the game when I saw a few days ago; I'm shocked at just how popular it is as well. I think he could basically just work on it 70 hours a week for the rest of his life and it would still be a great hourly rate.

Personally I play Stardew a lot when my anxiety gets bad. This year has been pretty good for the game's Steam statistics.

[–] duchess@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago

Good enough to not release a new game in ten years, what small scale studio can say that.

[–] Anivia@feddit.org 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Probably only surpassed by Minecraft, although that is of course no longer an indie game today

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

The copy of Minecraft I bought back then no longer works (there was a bunch of buggy account change stuff that never worked for me). My copy of stardew valley still just works.

[–] msage@programming.dev -1 points 1 day ago

Meh, I prefer Terraria.