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Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone Can’t Let Go Of Stardew Valley (aftermath.site)

submitted 6 months ago by Goronmon@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] rigatti@lemmy.world 131 points 6 months ago

He surely has enough money from Stardew to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Why would he need to publish anything?

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 38 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I never thought about it like that. If he makes an average of just $0.50 per sale after all the storefront fees and taxes and stuff, he would still have enough money to pay himself $200,000 a year for an entire lifetime, just from the sales he's already made. No wonder he's so chill about keeping the game updated for free. What an awesome guy

[-] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 6 months ago

I thought $0.50 was low for this math to work out, but turns out 30 million copies of Stardew Valley have been sold, so that's $15 million, which over 60 years is $250k/year.

Still though I have no clue if $0.50 is normal take home per copy sold for a self published game (it seems low), but I'm very happy he's doing well for himself and hopes he makes more per copy sold. I've bought the game 4 times, so I'm doing my part!

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah, I chose $0.50 as an absurdly low assumption, because while the game nominally sells for $15, I don't know anything about costs involved. A quick google search says his net worth is somewhere around 30-45 million dollars, which is about twice what I estimated. Which most people would use as an excuse to sell the game to Microsoft and retire forever, but Eric Barone is too good for that. I just realized I only own the game on mobile and xbox. Reckon I might buy it on PC next paycheck

[-] CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago

Read a book that goes over the development of Stardew written by Jason Schreier and covered Eric a good bit.

The dude was was worth multi millions shortly after Stardew had launched and it hadn’t even occurred to him to buy a new car. Jason hung out with him and watched him climb over the seat to get into the drivers seat of his car because the door was broken. Then at some point Jason asked him how it felt to be a famous developer and Eric basically just said he didn’t care about the fame and actually didn’t want it. He just wanted people to enjoy what he made.

Saying Stardew Valley is a passion for Eric is an understatement. By the time he finished the game, he basically hated working on it. And ever since its launch, he’s worked on it for no reason other than to make a better game.

Eric Barone is a shining light in an industry of constant shame.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 months ago

He has hired a few contractors to help build out features like co-op, (though the first few versions were entirely him on his own). That would eat into profits a bit, but even if he paid each of them $100k for their work there are few enough for it to be a drop in the bucket

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 24 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

This reminds me of the new game Andrew Gower and his brothers have been working on, Brighter Shores. It's a pure passion project based on a from scratch game engine that was created to make programming (even massively) multiplayer online games much easier.

The goal isn't profit but rather, to have fun, and make a cool enjoyable game. He's said they've made more than enough money from the sale of Jagex and RuneScape back in the day (which FWIW, he regrets that sale and a lot of what has happened at Jagex/to RuneScape).

I love to see game developers (and people in general that ... "make it" and then go "you know what, I do have enough").