Stardew Valley Creator Doubles Down Against Paid DLC
As part of a new thread on X (Twitter), Stardew Valley creator ConcernedApe has confirmed that they would never charge for DLC or updates to the massive indie hit. This came after they announced that the console ports of Stardew Valley’s 1.6 update were still being worked on and may not be out for a while. The update came to PC back in March of this year. As always, fans were mostly receptive to this announcement- although one user, @Hizuku56, had the following response- particularly regarding the possibility for extra content being paid:
“As long as everything you add is completly free, with a bunch of new content, qol, etc, people won’t complain for the wait. Thanks for your dedicated love for your game !”
In response, ConcernedApe doubled down on updates being completely free on both PC and console. They said the following as a response to the above:
This follows the trend of free Stardew Valley updates for over eight years- with DLC sized additions like extra areas and a whole new island to explore still being free for all players. This goes completely against the AAA trend that sees even the smallest extra content being monetized. It also implies that any content being added to ConcernedApe’s next game, Haunted Chocolatier, would also be completely free. That project has yet to get a release date but, considering that its still being developed mostly just by a single developer, that’s understandable.
Image by ConcernedApe
As ConcernedApe gears more towards Haunted Chocolatier, it’s likely that updates for Stardew Valley will slow down in the coming months. However, its important to remember just how much was added to Stardew Valley for free when a huge portion of the fanbase would have been more than happy to pay for the content additions. Seeing ideas that could be the foundation of entire sequels be added to the base game for no extra cost is incredible- especially considering how huge the player base of Stardew Valley is. Better yet, according to ConcernedApe, the rollout of free updates for his game’s won’t be ending anytime soon.
