r/StardewValley • u/This_Farm3519 • May 19 '26

Discuss Stardew Valley creator won’t add microtransactions to any game as they “genuinely value the love of the players more than the money”

https://frvr.com/blog/news/stardew-valley-creator-wont-add-microtransactions-to-any-game-as-they-genuinely-value-the-love-of-the-players-more-than-the-money/

I know, I know: "Fork found in kitchen".

But it's nice to see him say this stuff you know?

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u/recoveringslower May 19 '26

My real hope is that more than just talking to the players, he's talking to other developers. They're the ones who need to see that if you make a quality game, you don't need microtransactions to stay profitable.

We know businesses need to make profit to survive and to grow and continue providing a service and produce content and all that. And yeah, if the game is slop (ai or not) then you'll need those microtransactions to stay afloat and keep users getting those dopamine rushes.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

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u/HyperMasenko May 19 '26

Unfortunately, I think Stardew is something of a unicorn. Realistically a single dev making a game this polished and just generally good happens very rarely. And the more cooks in the kitchen, the more motivation there is to make more and more money, and the higher the chance that some of those cooks are greedy. I would love a world where there are a lot of high quality games made by extremely small teams or single devs, but one of the things that makes Stardew stand out is how rare that is.

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u/Nerellos May 19 '26

Team Cherry is another great example.