Stardew Valley developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has revealed that he is open to working on the game for even longer, bringing in more content. Speaking to NPR, Barone spoke about being open to keep working on Stardew Valley for 50 more years.
Barone spoke about keeping an eye on criticisms of Stardew Valley that players might have, and how this often tends to inform his future plans for the game. With the belief that he owes players for his success, he refers to the continuous support of the game as his way of giving back to the community.
“I do take in a lot of what the fans are saying,” said Barone to NPR. “I pay attention to what their thoughts are, what their criticisms are. And the players are very important to me. I mean, I will never forget that it’s because of the players that I’m in this position, that the game was able to be popular, that my dreams as a game developer have come true.”
Barone also took time to discuss the idea that a game can have “too much content”, and how it can often get overwhelming for him to work on new features or bug fixes for the game. He also mentioned that he does ultimately want to make more than one game in his life.
“I think a game can have too much content,” continued Barone. “And I ultimately want Stardew Valley to be the best game it can be. So if I feel like it’s starting to become kind of overwhelmed with content to the point where it’s detrimental to the game’s entertainment factor, I would stop at that point.”
“Another thing is, I do want to make more than one game in my life. Including the development time, I’ve been working on Stardew Valley for over 12 years now.”
Barone capped things off by talking about how he will likely keep getting new ideas to add things, and potentially even add new content or bug fixes to Stardew Valley “50 years from now”.
“I don’t want to definitively say that the book is ever closed, because I think I will always have a desire to come back and maybe add a thing or two. You know, maybe even 50 years from now, I might add something.”
“I like creating things. I don’t think I’m ever going to retire. I think it would be funny to release an update when I’m, like, 90 years old — if I live that long. Let’s hope.”
Since its 2016 release, Stardew Valley has been immensely successful, with Barone revealing earlier this month that the farming sim had crossed 30 million in sales. He has also previously stated that he would never charge players for new content, tasking players with to “shame” him if he ever breaks the oath.
Currently, Barone is working on a new title, Haunted Chocolatier, which doesn’t yet have a release date. Stardew Valley, on the other hand, got a major update last year.
