Based.
Though I would 100% be fine with paying for Stardew DLC, the base game is worth so much more than its current price
I have bought it twice, possibly on sale both times but still. I’d never heard of it, and I’d never played any style of game like that, but Nintendo advertised it to me when it launched on the Switch and I eventually bought it. Later my family started taking the Switch more and I eventually bought it again in Steam. No regrets! Happy to support good games from small developers that don’t break the bank!
Oh shit, didn’t know it was on switch. Is there a digital only copy or do you need the game cart?
You can get it on the eShop. Stardew is on pretty much any device that can run it. With mod support, if at all possible.
It’s kinda wild to see how many big PC mods have an Android version these days.
Bought it on Switch, bought it on PC… Don’t even slightly regret the 2nd purchase!
I would rather buy it again or have the update/dlc released after some sort of community milestone in buying and giving away copies.
I really like the fact that its all one complete game and also every gaming person should have a copy, regardless if they can personally afford it.
The Ape family name is honorable
The Apes always pay their debts.
What about the Bored Ape?
30 million copies sold. even if he only made a dollar into his pocket for each sale…hes doing alright.
But I have absolutely no problem with that whatsoever. Dude wrote a good, solid, complete game, sold it for a fair price, and made bank. That is the business model I want software to be sold under, and I’m thrilled to see it working for him.
Right, not only do I not have a problem with this - but it SHOULD be rewarded.
Personally I beat the v1.1 version of the game back in Oct 2016 - but I purchased the game a second time on android because a) i wanted to support a cross platform port and b) the guy really deserves it.
I like it when I have the option to support a developer more, but it isn’t expected or required.
I mean this is great, props… But didn’t he already make his nut with this game?? I mean I can play it on my fucking Tesla, I assume he got paid.
Sure. He made many millions of dollars within the first couple years of releasing it. That’s why he can pretty much do whatever he wants, including continuing to work on the game without charging additional money for it. And of course, it keeps selling more copies, and will for many years to come, so he has tons of money continuing to flood in.
He certainly seems like a pretty grounded guy, and it’s nice that he tries to be cool about stuff, including not gouging the player base for more money. Being an individual has huge advantages compared to being a corporation, in some ways. A corporation would pretty much be obligated to maximize profit. He can just be pleased that he brings joy to millions of players, and has already made a fortune.
Yeah - I don’t want to be too dismissive. I’ve read interviews with him, and despite his success, he hasn’t measurably changed his lifestyle or fallen into the traps a big influx of money can cause. It honestly reminds me of No Man’s Sky (minus the redempetion arc) where enough money was made from the base product that it funds ongoing development for the forseeable future.
Yeah. He deserves his success, and I’m happy to hear he’s doing good things for his customers… But this kind of reads like a slight on all the developers who release DLC for profit. The vast majority of companies don’t succeed this well on any game.
So I’m glad he’s said this, but I also don’t think poorly of devs who release for-profit DLC, either.
There is a difference between the DLC that is one and whatever the hell nowadays is practice. When its something like the eldenring DLC a dlc is absolutely fine.
This. It all boils down to value for money. 5 dollars for a skin cosmetic is bullshit. 5 dollars or more for DLC with meaningful content is okay.
If you’re going to sell a DLC that is only a skin and people buy it, I don’t have an issue. A skin adds nothing outside of “looks” and it’s purely optional. If you the player want to pay for it, be my guest.
It’s when games release a game that is unfinished, has bugs, and what should be a patch is sold as a DLC, I have problems with that.
Or when DLC adds a competitive advantage, that is just wrong. Like for $5 a month, you get extra “stability” in your scope, or the whole “pride and accomplishment” crates.
Those DLCs can go fuck themselves.
Even if its 5(money) for a supporter item or skin it would be fine. Its different depending on the studio size.
Yeah but concerned ape added about half a game’s content with that new island. Nobody would’ve blinked if they charged for it.
Absolutely.
CA is too good for us.
Fucking legend
The sad part is that the idea behind DLCs (to develop further content for a game already released, in exchange for additional money) is reasonable. Or it would be, if shitty developers didn’t abuse it to the point that it stopped being “downloadable content” to become “dumb and lazy cashgrab”.
I also think that CA isn’t just being benign with this statement, or his whole “let us not be arseholes” approach towards development. He’s being smart; player trust might be hard to measure but it has direct impact on word-of-mouth advertisement and piracy, so it’s basically the difference between “everybody knows it, plenty bought it” and “the few ones who know it pirated it”.
Another excellent example of this working is Factorio.
The original game doesn’t cost a fortune, it’s made by a small extremely dedicated team. They polished it so hard the shine made everything else look like vanta black. Playing Factorio ruins other games because the depth and quality of everything else is so poor in comparison.
The game came out in like 2013 early access. Full release completed in 2020. A decade after initial launch, they are going to offer a DLC, that will cost money.
Absolutely happy to pay for a DLC for that perfection.
the idea behind DLCs
Back when they were called “Expansion Packs” and came on a disc for players who didn’t have a good internet connection. You can trace the death of the expac and the rise of MTX in the postlaunch monetization of Bethesda’s biggest games - Morrowind through Skyrim all have entire extra games that you can graft onto them for a premium price, but then during Skyrim’s release and re-release era they dip their toes into MTX via the Creation Club, to their total embrace of the concept in FO76.
But actually I think that blaming Bethesda is a bit of a red herring. The real dawn of DLC as we know it today wasn’t horse armor, it was Halo 2’s additional multiplayer maps. Microsoft went from releasing maps for free to charging for early access to maps that became free eventually to making everyone buy the maps. At around the same time they forced Valve to charge for Left for Dead 2 maps that were released for free on PC. MS really took point on conditioning gamers to lower their expectations for post launch content.
I don’t think charging for content is the problem, it’s just the way some companies do it.
This sounds like a therat/promise of seppuku. What a legend.
Such an incredible game and a great humble developer. Honestly, there’s nothing I can think of to do to improve the game from a gameplay mechanics standpoint, but there are a few technical back-end things I do wish it had :
- Cross-platform compatible cloud-based save support. I want to be able to play in my same game save regardless of what system I play on. I don’t even mind paying for the game multiple times, but I want to have a singular Stardew account that I can sync somehow between PlayStation, Steam Deck, iOS, etc.
- Cross-platform multiplayer. If I want to play on my Steam Deck and hop into my spouse’s farm on the Switch or whatever… or have them be able to do so on mine.
- Mixing local and online co-op. If my kid wants to play with my spouse split-screen and I want to play on my desktop, again - would love to just be able to do so more seamlessly.
- Dedicated server support.
I know at this point doing those things would be very hard from a technical standpoint since they’d probably require a lot of deep work in a code base that was not built to do any multiplayer to begin with, but I still would love if they could somehow do so or fork the base game to allow it to be done by the community.
I love Ape, and think he’s one of the best devs out there.
I don’t mind paid DLC like Elden Ring or Factorio 2.0, when it’s basically a whole complete game on top of it. But anything micro transaction can go right to hell
Rimworld devs sweatin’ rn.
Meh. They charge for DLC, the DLC is optional and adds a lot of depth to the game, it’s a small studio…
I’ll take it
My dude it’s a $125 indie game. Devs think they’re paradox or something.
Uhh… I guess it’s not technically DLC, but ConcernedApe is selling the game soundtrack for $5 on Steam. It’s in the game’s DLC category, but unlike some other soundtracks on Steam, it’s not dependent on owning the base game to purchase.
But it’s also downloadable content, so it is DLC… I guess it depends on how you want to define DLC nowadays.
DLC in this context is pretty widely understood to mean in game content. So additional areas, cosmetics, missions, etc. not the soundtrack. Steam just categorizes the soundtracks as DLC for games in general.
Is it possible the music has its own license and therefore warrants a separate listing?
It’s being sold via ConcernedApe on that Steam page I linked in my previous comment. So he’s earning the money from sales.
Using this definition, the game itself is DLC. Almost everything on the internet is a form of Downloadable Content.