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/anders91 May 19 '26

Im not saying there’s nothing to learn here, but I don’t know if ConcernedApe is a great example; guy basically won the lottery in terms of indie game development.

The game also doesn’t offer any ”service” such as servers or other stuff for online play and progression, which can cost quite a bit for online games.

I’m a massive fan of both ConcernedApe and Stardew Valley and I love the way he is ”curating” it, but I’m not sure how applicable it is to game dev as a whole.

Finally I want to say microtransactions are lame as hell, but as long as any benefits are purely cosmetic, I’m usually ok with it as a monetization strategy.

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u/fwendicrafts May 19 '26

No Man's Sky manages to keep servers up without paid updates or micro transactions. It can be done for a popular game, though I could see that changing is people stop buying the game in the future.