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.
Elden Ring’s DLC is pretty atypical though, even as far as DLCs are concerned. Comparing it to past FromSoftware DLCs for Dark Souls, Shadow of the Erd Tree is like the size of all of the Dark Souls DLCs combined.
Expecting every DLC to match Shadow of the Erd Tree is setting yourself up for disappointment. Would it be nice? Of course, but it would be unrealistic to expect every DLC to match it.
While I agree EA and Paradox are lazy in making DLC, studios should absolutely not be aiming to make every DLC like Shadow of the Erd Tree. That would only lead to studio closures and developer disappointment when they ultimately fail to meet that very high standard.
I would rather developers stick to making something that they realistically can, that way they can finish it and get the satisfaction of completing a DLC they wanted to make than get burned out making something with too big of a scope for their team.
I think i worded it wrong, aiming to be was meant as in taking notes on what it did right and doing something similarly right With their product. It wasn’t meant to mean that they all need to put another game into it or aim for impossible things.
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.
My issue with skins is that it is completely immersion breaking. You have Homelander and Gaia running around Call of Duty now. It’s comical and just destroys my enjoyment of the game.
The skins get worse and worse because to continue the money machine they have to make more and more unique skins that just destroy the cohesion of the world they’ve built.
Studio size has nothing to do with it, the only important matter here is whether the DLC is “required” or not. I’m fine with BS cosmetic DLC, that really doesn’t matter, but when you promise features X, Y, and Z, and deliver X and Y but gate Z behind a DLC, that’s unacceptable. I don’t care if you’re have 1000 employees or 1, that’s wrong.
DLC should be for:
optional items, like skins, soundtracks, etc
additional story content not promised in the original release
Oh it does, if a small Studio releases a DLC wich just does a little (still in the lines you gave 100% agree on that) more story or adds a minigame or a new game mode or maybe even new game+ its ok (for a non outrageous price) if a big studio makes a dlc, my expectations are also higher.
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
That’s fine for him, but let’s not take this as a guideline for the entire industry.
There are plenty of talented, creative, and committed developers who are trying to turn their dream game into their life’s work.
For most of them, the only way they can survive spending another 5 years working on the same title post-launch is by charging for the new stuff they make.
Yeah easy for him to say, he’s a one-man operation, so he gets ALL the profit to himself. Probably millions of dollars at this point… he’s set for life. He doesn’t really need DLC money. But other devs probably do.
Your point is basically the same but I believe he isn’t technically a one man dev anymore. For a while, he has worked in a small team, with a few games released/in EA on Steam having been created by former SV devs on the same engine with ConcernedApe’s permission.
I assume he also outsources the work of the console ports.
In any case, it doesn’t take away from the point, and you could probably still classify him as a solo developer for the purpose of talking about his upcoming Willy Wonka simulator. It’s much easier to pay 4-5 people from the proceeds of one of the best selling indie games of all time than it is to pay 40-50 people from the proceeds of a 10 year old game with free updates and expansions. No Man’s Sky, for example, must have some really consistent sales figures for them to continue to be making money.
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.
The cross-platform saves probably wouldn’t be that hard from a technical perspective. The game is written using MonoGame and likely doesn’t have that many changes to the core of the game for ports. From what I know about MonoGame (which is admittedly only a little, so I may be wrong!!) the engine abstracts pretty much everything.
I think the stumbling blocks are outside factors. Games often don’t update on different platforms at the very same time because console vendors take longer to vet updates. A game save from an updated PC version synced to a console version without the update could break it. Also setting up and maintaining the server infrastructure for syncing is its own can of worms. Certainly doable but it would pretty much require him to outsource that and he may simply not want that.
Anything that is worked on for that long is fair game for versioning. It used to be that you bought a version of a software and it was yours for life, but if you wanted the new fancy stuff, you had to buy the new version.
Now it’s either a subscription or an “app” model, how long can a developer continue to support a 3€ one-time-buy app with new features? Buyers run out sooner or later.
I sail the high seas from time to time, and I think I’ve bought Stardew 3 times now. It is an incredible game loop, and I will support the dev however I can.
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!
Why? Rimworld is a great game on its own. The DLC are basically large and detailed mods on their own. If you don’t want to pay for the DLC, don’t do so. Most of the mods don’t need the DLC.
Or just find a good sale on them when Steam does their thing 4-6 times a year.
Each expansion more or less adds extensions to the game the fundamentally expand on the mechanics and systems within the games. I’m okay paying for that, personally.
The Factorio Devs made this Blogpost some time ago about how to go forward with development. It basically boiled down to developing a big (paid) expansion pack. I would be totally fine with Stardew Valley doing the same. However, going for free updates was discarded for Factorio because they have a “smaller but more dedicated audience [compared to Terraria and Minecraft]”. I don’t think that applies to Stardew Valley so free updates might be the way to go.
I don’t know so much about Terraria because I don’t really play it but Minecraft makes most of its money through merchandise. The game is more vehicle to sell green plushies and funko pops than it is to make money itself.
Minecraft was just the example they used in the post but I agree. Minecraft is no indie game studio anymore atleast since Microsoft took over. But at least the free update policy hasn’t changed since the takeover
I suppose that’s nice. Although I do not see the problem with charging for updates, with multiplayer it’s a problem because people might get pressured into buying something they might otherwise not get it because of friends, but with the single player game I can’t see the issue. And why doesn’t the dev deserve to be compensated?
Charging for updates isn’t intrinsically bad. A good expansion pack at a fair price can be a good deal for both the players and the devs. But there is a modern trend of games trying to squeeze players for every dollar they can get; and when content is deliberately held back in the hopes of selling it for a bit more money later, it starts to become a bit perverse. The game itself can become an advertisement for selling more bits of the game in the future - and it just devalues the experience.
In the specific case of Stardew Valley, the game is a major hit - and it continues to sell well. So even though existing players are getting the new content for free, the developer is still going to get paid. Obviously he could get a lot more if he charged for it, but he has decided he doesn’t need that. He’d rather just make the game as good as he can make it.
Here’s a personal story of mine, about a different game:
Several years ago I was selected to be a beta tester for a major game franchise. I was a very well known member of that community, know for making custom balance patches and bugfixes - and so they wanted me to test their new release. I was pretty excited to be a part of that. But when I got my first beta copy, I didn’t really play it much because the game barely worked. It crashed very frequently, and so my feedback was basically just “it crashes when I do this”. I figured it wasn’t worth trying to give balance ideas when the game was in that state. Anyway… time went on, and things didn’t improve much. There were some graphics changes and a bit of UI work… but it was still super unstable. The release date was getting pretty close. But before it was even possible to do a full playthrough without constant reloads to dodge game-ending bugs, there was detailed plans posted on the beta forums talking about the first 4 DLC packs that would be released after the game launched.
I stopped taking AAA games seriously after that. I was totally disillusioned. They were launching their AAA game in non-functional state, with the hope of fixing the worst bugs in a day 1 patch. Very little useful playtesting was done, and so the features of the game were a bit slap-dash, but yet somehow they were dividing up content for as many DLCs packs as possible. They didn’t even have a functional game and yet they were talking about how to sell more stuff. It was a real eye-opening experience for me; and it really colours the way I see other games that launch in a buggy state, where pretty much the only thing that works is the in-game store.
So yeah, I can appreciate the view that maybe charging for updates is a slippy slope that Concerned Ape doesn’t want to step onto; even if he does have very solid footing for if he wanted to tread that ground a bit.
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.
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The game is closed-source. Who cares? It’s already garbage at that point
Nice
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.
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.
Elden Ring’s DLC is pretty atypical though, even as far as DLCs are concerned. Comparing it to past FromSoftware DLCs for Dark Souls, Shadow of the Erd Tree is like the size of all of the Dark Souls DLCs combined.
Expecting every DLC to match Shadow of the Erd Tree is setting yourself up for disappointment. Would it be nice? Of course, but it would be unrealistic to expect every DLC to match it.
Absolutely but its the standard studios should be aiming for or at least in this direction and not whatsoever EA and Paradox are doing.
While I agree EA and Paradox are lazy in making DLC, studios should absolutely not be aiming to make every DLC like Shadow of the Erd Tree. That would only lead to studio closures and developer disappointment when they ultimately fail to meet that very high standard.
I would rather developers stick to making something that they realistically can, that way they can finish it and get the satisfaction of completing a DLC they wanted to make than get burned out making something with too big of a scope for their team.
I think i worded it wrong, aiming to be was meant as in taking notes on what it did right and doing something similarly right With their product. It wasn’t meant to mean that they all need to put another game into it or aim for impossible things.
Ah, I see. Then in that case, sure. As long as developers take the note that they should make the best product that they possibly can, then I agree.
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.
My issue with skins is that it is completely immersion breaking. You have Homelander and Gaia running around Call of Duty now. It’s comical and just destroys my enjoyment of the game.
The skins get worse and worse because to continue the money machine they have to make more and more unique skins that just destroy the cohesion of the world they’ve built.
This is all there is to be said on the matter
Even if its 5(money) for a supporter item or skin it would be fine. Its different depending on the studio size.
Studio size has nothing to do with it, the only important matter here is whether the DLC is “required” or not. I’m fine with BS cosmetic DLC, that really doesn’t matter, but when you promise features X, Y, and Z, and deliver X and Y but gate Z behind a DLC, that’s unacceptable. I don’t care if you’re have 1000 employees or 1, that’s wrong.
DLC should be for:
Oh it does, if a small Studio releases a DLC wich just does a little (still in the lines you gave 100% agree on that) more story or adds a minigame or a new game mode or maybe even new game+ its ok (for a non outrageous price) if a big studio makes a dlc, my expectations are also higher.
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
That’s fine for him, but let’s not take this as a guideline for the entire industry.
There are plenty of talented, creative, and committed developers who are trying to turn their dream game into their life’s work.
For most of them, the only way they can survive spending another 5 years working on the same title post-launch is by charging for the new stuff they make.
Yeah easy for him to say, he’s a one-man operation, so he gets ALL the profit to himself. Probably millions of dollars at this point… he’s set for life. He doesn’t really need DLC money. But other devs probably do.
Your point is basically the same but I believe he isn’t technically a one man dev anymore. For a while, he has worked in a small team, with a few games released/in EA on Steam having been created by former SV devs on the same engine with ConcernedApe’s permission.
I assume he also outsources the work of the console ports.
In any case, it doesn’t take away from the point, and you could probably still classify him as a solo developer for the purpose of talking about his upcoming Willy Wonka simulator. It’s much easier to pay 4-5 people from the proceeds of one of the best selling indie games of all time than it is to pay 40-50 people from the proceeds of a 10 year old game with free updates and expansions. No Man’s Sky, for example, must have some really consistent sales figures for them to continue to be making money.
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 :
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.
The cross-platform saves probably wouldn’t be that hard from a technical perspective. The game is written using MonoGame and likely doesn’t have that many changes to the core of the game for ports. From what I know about MonoGame (which is admittedly only a little, so I may be wrong!!) the engine abstracts pretty much everything.
I think the stumbling blocks are outside factors. Games often don’t update on different platforms at the very same time because console vendors take longer to vet updates. A game save from an updated PC version synced to a console version without the update could break it. Also setting up and maintaining the server infrastructure for syncing is its own can of worms. Certainly doable but it would pretty much require him to outsource that and he may simply not want that.
This sounds like a therat/promise of seppuku. What a legend.
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 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.
Anything that is worked on for that long is fair game for versioning. It used to be that you bought a version of a software and it was yours for life, but if you wanted the new fancy stuff, you had to buy the new version.
Now it’s either a subscription or an “app” model, how long can a developer continue to support a 3€ one-time-buy app with new features? Buyers run out sooner or later.
Go the Terraria route and sell merchandise!
Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with paid DLC that’s done because the dev loves the game and wants to make more of it.
I sail the high seas from time to time, and I think I’ve bought Stardew 3 times now. It is an incredible game loop, and I will support the dev however I can.
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?
deleted by creator
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!
Bought on PC, Switch, Vita, phone… not even ashamed.
The Ape family name is honorable
The Apes always pay their debts.
What about the Bored Ape?
Black sheep of the family
And Bathing Ape
A japanese fashion Brand? With bored ape on one end and concerned ape on the other, they seem to be center.
CA is too good for us.
Rimworld devs sweatin’ rn.
Why? Rimworld is a great game on its own. The DLC are basically large and detailed mods on their own. If you don’t want to pay for the DLC, don’t do so. Most of the mods don’t need the DLC.
Or just find a good sale on them when Steam does their thing 4-6 times a year.
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.
No, it’s a $30 indie game.
Each expansion more or less adds extensions to the game the fundamentally expand on the mechanics and systems within the games. I’m okay paying for that, personally.
I agree it doesn’t change the core game only adds more Rimworld if you’ve exhausted the current content
If you violate the oath and make good paid DLC that’s worth the price, I won’t even be mad.
I agree. Good expansions are usually worth the money.
I don’t think charging for content is the problem, it’s just the way some companies do it.
Exactly. A good content DLC should be similar to buying a new game, but cheaper for both the devs and players.
The Factorio Devs made this Blogpost some time ago about how to go forward with development. It basically boiled down to developing a big (paid) expansion pack. I would be totally fine with Stardew Valley doing the same. However, going for free updates was discarded for Factorio because they have a “smaller but more dedicated audience [compared to Terraria and Minecraft]”. I don’t think that applies to Stardew Valley so free updates might be the way to go.
I don’t know so much about Terraria because I don’t really play it but Minecraft makes most of its money through merchandise. The game is more vehicle to sell green plushies and funko pops than it is to make money itself.
Minecraft was just the example they used in the post but I agree. Minecraft is no indie game studio anymore atleast since Microsoft took over. But at least the free update policy hasn’t changed since the takeover
I suppose that’s nice. Although I do not see the problem with charging for updates, with multiplayer it’s a problem because people might get pressured into buying something they might otherwise not get it because of friends, but with the single player game I can’t see the issue. And why doesn’t the dev deserve to be compensated?
Charging for updates isn’t intrinsically bad. A good expansion pack at a fair price can be a good deal for both the players and the devs. But there is a modern trend of games trying to squeeze players for every dollar they can get; and when content is deliberately held back in the hopes of selling it for a bit more money later, it starts to become a bit perverse. The game itself can become an advertisement for selling more bits of the game in the future - and it just devalues the experience.
In the specific case of Stardew Valley, the game is a major hit - and it continues to sell well. So even though existing players are getting the new content for free, the developer is still going to get paid. Obviously he could get a lot more if he charged for it, but he has decided he doesn’t need that. He’d rather just make the game as good as he can make it.
Here’s a personal story of mine, about a different game: Several years ago I was selected to be a beta tester for a major game franchise. I was a very well known member of that community, know for making custom balance patches and bugfixes - and so they wanted me to test their new release. I was pretty excited to be a part of that. But when I got my first beta copy, I didn’t really play it much because the game barely worked. It crashed very frequently, and so my feedback was basically just “it crashes when I do this”. I figured it wasn’t worth trying to give balance ideas when the game was in that state. Anyway… time went on, and things didn’t improve much. There were some graphics changes and a bit of UI work… but it was still super unstable. The release date was getting pretty close. But before it was even possible to do a full playthrough without constant reloads to dodge game-ending bugs, there was detailed plans posted on the beta forums talking about the first 4 DLC packs that would be released after the game launched.
I stopped taking AAA games seriously after that. I was totally disillusioned. They were launching their AAA game in non-functional state, with the hope of fixing the worst bugs in a day 1 patch. Very little useful playtesting was done, and so the features of the game were a bit slap-dash, but yet somehow they were dividing up content for as many DLCs packs as possible. They didn’t even have a functional game and yet they were talking about how to sell more stuff. It was a real eye-opening experience for me; and it really colours the way I see other games that launch in a buggy state, where pretty much the only thing that works is the in-game store.
So yeah, I can appreciate the view that maybe charging for updates is a slippy slope that Concerned Ape doesn’t want to step onto; even if he does have very solid footing for if he wanted to tread that ground a bit.
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.
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.