Smash hit indie farming sim Stardew Valley is somehow continuing its meteoric ascent despite the fact that it's almost nine years old, at least if its latest sales figures are anything to go by.
Over on the official Stardew Valley site's press portal, Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone says that the game has managed to shift a staggering 41 million copies "as of December 2024".
According to Barone, more than 26 million of those copies have been sold on PC alone, while 7.9 million copies have been sold on the Nintendo Switch. The game's success being primarily PC-based makes a lot of sense given that that's the first platform on which it was released.
It didn't take Stardew Valley very long to begin its journey to success. Just a couple of months after the game's initial launch, it had crossed a million sales, hitting 3.5 million players on Steam alone in January 2018.
Even on mobile platforms, where free-to-play games reign supreme and upfront paid products often struggle, Stardew Valley managed to rake in $1 million in sales on iOS within just a few weeks of its launch on the app store.
It's clear that Stardew Valley has struck a chord to an even greater degree than other cozy farming sims; it arguably spearheaded the current wave of such games, especially in the indie sphere, so its success makes a lot of sense through that lens.
The game, which is heavily inspired by the Story of Seasons (formerly Harvest Moon) franchise, even attracted praise from that franchise's creator Yasuhiro Wada, who said Stardew "carries on the legacy of the original Harvest Moon very well".
As for what Barone is working on next, he's currently developing a new cozy life sim-style game by the name of Haunted Chocolatier.
The game's development is progressing slowly, largely because Barone is still working on Stardew Valley, which he describes as a "big and popular game" to which he has "a lot of attachment".
He also says that Haunted Chocolatier will "still take a while", but that following the Stardew Valley 1.6 release on all platforms, he "would like to finish Haunted Chocolatier next".
Here's hoping that happens sooner rather than later. Until then, Stardew Valley is available right now on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and mobile platforms.
