Just months after revealing there’d be no more Stardew Valley updates until Haunted Chocolatier released, creator Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has confirmed that another update is coming to the fan-favourite farming sim.
Addressing fans at the Stardew Valley Symphony of Seasons concert in Seattle, Barone himself took to the stage and revealed a “secret” to the excited attendees.
As posted to TikTok by jillbobagginz (thanks, FRVR), Barone said: “After that [last 1.6] update, I was thinking, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to make another update’. But I wanted to share something with you tonight, it’s kind of a secret… there’s going to be another update.”
We don’t know any details yet, of course, let alone timescales, but it’s great news to Stardew fans nonetheless, given Barone revealed in April that Stardew “pulls [him] away from devoting all [his] time to Haunted Chocolatier,” the follow-up game he’s also currently working on. Quite how this new update will impact the development of Haunted Chocolatier – if at all – remains to be seen, though.
Pixelated farming sim Stardew Valley first debuted almost a decade ago, and has since gone from strength to strength. Last year, Barone released Stardew Valley’s bumper 1.6 update, which essentially boosted the game to an almost 2.0 status, introducing a vast number of features to the base game such as new NPC dialogues, home renovations, and turtle pets.
As of December last year, Stardew Valley had sold in excess of 41m copies across platforms. Of those 41m, over half are on PC, with 26m copies sold. Meanwhile, the Nintendo Switch accounts for 7.9m Stardew Valley sales and though there’s been a handful of crossovers with other games during that time, Barone recently revealed he’s never made any money directly from in-game collaborations.