For Stardew Valley's 10th anniversary, we didn't just speak to creator Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) about the game's present and future. We also went out into the community to find out how Stardew Valley has changed the lives of its players, from everyday fans to popular content creators. Here, we've shared three stories – from a music farm creator, a speedrunner, and a mod maker – on how Stardew Valley impacted them. And we've interspersed those with testimonials from fans whose experiences with Stardew Valley have helped them overcome personal challenges, work through grief, and connect with loved ones.
Responses have been very lightly edited for length and clarity.
"Over the past 10 years [my wife and I] have played [Stardew Valley] off and on, on our own farms and together once co-op released, and we always come back for more. We're sitting on well over 1,000 hours of combined playtime. We love everything about the game – the music, the characters, all of the creatures and animals and crops, and most of all the story. There is so much heart and reality packed into this game. For my wife and I it's what we turn to for comfort, for joy, and for nostalgia... I have bought this game as a gift at least a dozen times, and will continue to do so. We have played together four-player with my best friend and his wife and we're all nearing 40. I have given it to coworkers and friends and family. We have the cookbook and the board game and a dozen shirts. Stardew Valley is so important to us." -u/SPECPOL
"It's a comfort I can always fall back on during hard times. On tough days I boot up my saved game, and fish, farm, or spend countless hours decorating until I feel better (and it always works)." -u/WildMoonChild0129
"It was the first video game that I felt I could wholeheartedly share with my young children. Even though it has some adult storylines in it, I knew they would go completely over their heads. We played together in the living room, everyone on their own device, but chatting all the while about how our melons were coming in or how annoying Clint was being. I named all of my chickens after my daughter’s classmates, and all of my cows after my son’s. It faded after a while, but came back with a roar after we took ourselves to Symphony of the Seasons when it came through town last year. They are teenagers now. We all started playing again and doing three-part harmonies around the house of the best songs. (I like to do the baselines: bleep blop- bleep bleep blop.) It’s our special fun thing. None of their friends are into it and they usually tell me that they can’t imagine sharing it with anyone besides us." -u/Sad_Hovercraft_1367
"It's basically what has kept me sane throughout cancer treatment! I feel like ConcernedApe is part of my medical team at this point
"I was diagnosed with very aggressive but treatable cancer last February and have been through brutal chemo, countless hospitalisations, two major and four minor surgeries, and am currently in round 11 of 16 of immunotherapy... I had to take nearly five months off work (back part time now!) so I spent a lot of time in bed playing Stardew!
"I have nearly 2,000 hours in the game and through my treatment I have done loads of little challenge runs. I'm currently on farm number four of my colour run challenge — based on the dye pot colours, I can only sell items which are red/orange/yellow/green/blue/purple and my goal is to make 1 million gold and decorate the farm in the colour theme.
"I have been living in a hellish time of my life the last year but my farmer lives safely and happily in the Valley and it gives me strength." -u/RedTheWolf
Malblueeyes
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Malblueeyes suddenly found herself with a lot of extra time on her hands. Her job had been deemed inessential, and she was out of work.
With her free time, she turned to Stardew Valley. Her husband saw her playing more, and suggested she try streaming it. At first, Malblueeyes wasn't so sure she wanted to. But then one day, she just went live. She didn't even tell him she was doing it.
"This was never a thing that was planned," she says. "It was a thing that at the time I needed something to make me feel like I had a purpose."
Malblueeyes had loved Stardew for years, having played since 2017. It was very different from anything she'd played prior, and was her first true resource management/sim game.
"There were just so many moments where I was just sitting back going, 'My God, I'm having a lot of fun and I'm not terrified.' And so, I just, how could you not love a game that is as difficult as you make it?"
On stream, Malblueeyes started just playing casually. Later, to focus her streams a bit more, she began to do "Challenge Farms," or farms where you try to achieve certain goals under very limited conditions, such as only growing one crop or only raising animals. She began to pick up a following on Twitch. While a lot of her audience just seemed to be there for good vibes, she says that a large number of people were first-time players, asking questions on how she was accomplishing certain things in-game.
"If you're a Twitch streamer, you feel that pressure to know stuff," she says. "And I figured out very quickly, even with the 1,200 hours of Stardew I had on my Xbox, that there was a lot to Stardew I didn't know. And so, I started developing these challenge farms that would force me to confront aspects of Stardew that I was otherwise unfamiliar with or just didn't really interact with unless I had to. So, like unlocking the Joja Warehouse, that's become a staple in my challenge farms because I had never done it before and shockingly enough, a lot of Stardew players don't, they refuse. And so, one of the best ways I've discovered is to allow people to vicariously experience that through my challenge farms. They don't have to unlock Joja, but they can at least see what it's like to unlock Joja."
One of Malblueeyes' first challenge farms was called "Floja," where she unlocked Joja only raising money by growing flowers — an activity she hadn't really engaged with in Stardew Valley before. She had a great time, and kept doing different challenge runs. Until one day, she was struck with a different idea.
Oh, it was so bad. It was awful. But at that time, it was like the coolest thing I had ever done."I was sitting and I was watching one of my friends streaming one night trying to think of challenge farms and it was somebody's birthday in her chat and I was just tootling around and I thought, 'Oh, you know what would be fun? Making a happy birthday farm, that would be fun to make a happy birthday farm.' So anytime someone's in chat and they say it's your birthday, it's my birthday. You just go on the farm and you have a little party set up. And then I thought, 'Okay, but what other than just a table and flowers, what's really going to set this farm apart?' And that's when I thought of the flute blocks. That's how that started."
Stardew Valley includes "Flute Blocks," blocks that are placeable out in the world that play a selected note when a character walks past them. By combining strings of these, players can design little melodies that will play as they walk. Malblueeyes wanted to make one of these for the Happy Birthday song, but she self-admittedly isn't a musician. She can read music, but can't identify notes by ear. So she went hunting for assistance online, trying to figure out what note she should even start on. It was then that she discovered Music Farms: farms dedicated solely to playing elaborate tunes by walking through flute block mazes that often span the entire map.
"I took the happy birthday farm and I balled it up and I threw it away, because who wants Happy Birthday when I can do something even bigger? And I spent 12 hours doing He's a Pirate. That was my very first music farm was He's a Pirate from the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and I was so proud of it. And when I look back on it now, oh, it was terrible. Oh, it was so bad. It was awful. But at that time, it was like the coolest thing I had ever done."
With some encouragement from friends, Malblueeyes showed the Music Farm to her audience, and everyone loved it. So she started making more. As she improved her skills, she eventually opened up a channel point redemption incentive so her audience members could request songs, and was quickly hit with numerous requests for all sorts of complex songs.
"And I would figure out a way to do it," she says. "I would always tell people, 'Give me a week.' Nah, I would sit there for hours after stream and figure it out and make it work. And then the very next stream I would be like, 'Your farm's done. It's done. Let's watch it together.' And people just loved it and I loved it. And I had never felt so vital before in a community."
Malblueeyes took a break from Twitch for nearly two years, during which time she was still making music farms and posting them on TikTok. She couldn't help herself. She started streaming again back in November, and while the break was much-needed, she's glad to be back in the community.
"It makes me happy to make other people happy," she says. "And I don't think that there's anything I've ever done that has ever made people as happy as when they request a music farm and I make it for them. People just, they love it and I love it."
"Got me through the stress and isolation of covid. It's fun to see how high I can get my sales at the end of each year while clearing my mind. Great game." -u/onebluephish1981
"It helped me through grieving both of our dogs who we lost within a year of each other." -u/spookychick12
"Stardew came out right before I graduated high school. At the time, I felt overwhelmed by the weight of deciding what to do with my future. I didn't get into my dream program at my dream school, but I did get into a great school and needed to pick a major soon. I was constantly reminded that childhood was about to end, and what happened next could affect the rest of my life.
"Then, I found this cute farming game that reminded me of the hours I spent on Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, and for the first time, I wasn't worried about my future. I was worried about having the right items prepared for the community center, or guessing which gifts would make my villager friends happy. Then, I read about ConcernedApe's story and how he too began this chapter with a door closed... and he chose to open a window. That set me on a path to pursue game development on my own, and I fell in love with it. There's something so special about this art form; creating your own worlds where other people can relax, challenge themselves, or just escape. I didn't think any of it was possible until I played the absolute labor of love that Stardew is.
"It's still a big part of my life; I've gotten all of my friends into it, included the main overture in my wedding, have seen both of the concerts, and even got to meet the big man himself in New York. I made sure to thank him for the impact he's had on my life as well as plenty of other farmers out there." -u/TinyBoatDev
"When I started playing, I was in college. I had just met my partner. Now we're grown ass adults with a house and a 1.5 year old son. I can't wait until our son is old enough and we can play with him!
"Actually, confession: I already made a save for the baby on my Switch because he's always trying to press buttons while I play. So far he hasn't made it past the first day because all he does is walk in circles, open the pause menu, and attempt to throw away his tools. But when he's ready, it'll be there for him!" -u/pyramidheadlove
Lichatton
Lichatton, a Stardew Valley streamer, speedrunner, and world record holder, did not start out playing the game with any great ambitions. She never even intended to be a streamer when she first went live one New Year's, just as the clock ticked into 2021.
It was thanks to the recommendation of a streamer friend that she was inspired to try streaming for the first time, playing Stardew Valley's new-at-the-time 1.5 update. Lichatton had already played Stardew Valley before and even had a file on Year 8, but describes herself at the time as more into League of Legends. Her streams managed to attract a few viewers, and one day, some speedrunners showed up in her stream and suggested she give that a shot. So Lichatton rushed to complete a fish bundle, and loved it so much she started running regularly.
Now, Lichatton is the world record holder for reaching Level 50 in the Mines, has over 15,000 Twitch subscribers, and over 8,000 hours in Stardew Valley itself.
I came back upstairs and I looked at him and I'm like, 'I just got a world record off-stream. Do you think people will be mad at me?'"I told my husband, I'm like, 'I just need a break. Can you watch the baby? I'm going to go speedrun,'" Lichatton tells me. "And then I came back upstairs and I looked at him and I'm like, 'I just got a world record off-stream. Do you think people will be mad at me?'"
No one was mad at her. Lichatton says that the community that has formed around Stardew Valley is one of the best things about the game. She's found it especially friendly toward women in a way that other online gaming communities are not, and in speedrunning especially she's seen an increase in the number of women on the leaderboards in recent years.
"Stardew Valley is a very supportive community. I haven't ever had trolls on Twitch or anything like that, because my community usually bashes them. But they talk to each other's communities, so like all of my friends are Haboo's [another record-holding Stardew Valley speedrunner] friends or other people's friends and it's kind of like people bounce around from one place to another."
Speedrunning Stardew Valley has changed over the years, particularly with major patch updates, Lichatton explains. Patch 1.6 especially shook things up due to all the content that was added. "I'll give you an example," she says, offering one that admittedly may not make sense if you haven't played Stardew Valley yet but which should click immediately for avid players. "Community Center, before you needed to do a house upgrade for 10,000 gold and 450 wood to be able to get two of the items for one of the bundles, and now you don't need to upgrade your house. So that changes things quite a bit because you need less money.
"Even the mining has changed a lot, which is kind of where the grinding came from. Because before you would run on previous patches, but then we discovered that you can get a club on level five. So the enemies that you kill give you a chance at a ladder, so that kind of changed everything up and shook it up."
Now, Lichatton is working on what she describes as a "randomizer" of Stardew made by a friend of hers. You choose a letter of the alphabet, and the randomizer gives you an item in the game, and you play to see how fast you can acquire that item in a new file. "We're almost at the end of it. We're on Z. So for Z, she did Zuzu City Express, which is a poster you can get from the crane game in the movie theater."
Future ambitions for Lichatton include working on her times for reaching the 120th level of the Mines. She also wants to eventually do a modded playthrough of the game, as she's never played with mods before despite all the hours she's sunk in.
"I think the coolest thing I've been able to do because of this game is, my husband and I got to be on [Summer Games Done Quick] a couple of years ago, and that was a very, very rewarding experience."
Stardew Valley and speedruns of it have changed Lichatton's day-to-day life significantly. She now has a massive audience, new goals to reach, new friends, and a following she never imagined. But while she loves both speedrunning and streaming, she also just loves Stardew for what it is.
"Stardew is just one of those games that always got me through difficult days," she says. "You can have a bad day at work and go home and you're just going to be in a happy Stardew world where you can farm, you can do whatever you want, you can just hang out. It's just one of those games that's always been a part of my life and it's very, very special to me."
"I’ve been playing for a little under two years, but it’s my favourite game in the world. I do go through ruts where I won’t play for a month, then nonstop for hours everyday. I love decorating my house and farm, dating Haley, memorizing everyone’s loved gifts, all while keeping track in a meticulous spreadsheet. It’s also nice to love something that was made by a good person, ConcernedApe has created an incredible game that I will forever rave about." -u/ks_wizard
"I started the game eight years ago over the holidays after my stepfather suddenly died and was in this weird limbo. I don't remember how far I progressed in my farm that week but it was the calm, relaxing vibe I needed to not think about real life. I'd played Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons so I would have played it eventually but it holds a special place in my heart to help bring calm structure and comfort I needed that week.
"I've made several farms since then but I'm currently back on that first farm save trying for my first perfection.
"To me this game is cozy perfection I will forever return to. I will never repay [ConcernedApe] the mental stability and entertainment he's given me for only $15. (Technically more as I've gotten it on every platform I own to try to throw more money at him)." -u/get_hi_on_life
"As someone who has struggled with addiction and some extreme life lows, Stardew has been a very wholesome escape for me. It was a pleasant distraction during recovery or anytime I felt like achieving a small goal in the game. The music was always calming and serene, and I really like what ConcernedApe has had to say about the roots of the game's creation and the meaning it gives to people around the world." -u/wikkineaver
"It brought my bride and I closer together.
"She started playing it at the suggestion of our children. One night I surprised her. I bought the game, created my person, and joined her online game that she had created for our kids to join her. When she realized it was me, she was quite shocked to say the least. Cozy games are not really my thing, but now after more than a year we've reached perfection once, started a couple more farms, and tried out some Palia. She and I playing cozy games together has kind of become a nightly ritual." -u/PiperDon
"It was the first thing I felt like I could enjoy after becoming a mother for the first time. I struggled deeply after having my first baby. Looking back it was probably [post-partum depression], but at the time I didn’t know what was wrong with me. My husband finally convinced me to download this game and it was something that brought me joy in hard times. Even now, after five years of playing the game, I still play it often. When I’m not playing the game, I’m probably watching Stardew Valley related content on YouTube. I just recently hit perfect about a week ago after five years of playing and I may have cried a little. This game will always be special to me." -u/phyrgianhalfcad
Devin Hedegaard
Devin Hedegaard went to school for accounting… only to end up making one of the most popular Stardew Valley mods ever, and eventually, working on Stardew Valley itself.
Hedegaard, aka FlashShifter, had absolutely no actual experience modding when he first started on Stardew Valley Expanded. He tells me he used to mess around in Photoshop making avatars and forum signatures, and he had made custom maps in Advance Wars and StarCraft. He started playing Stardew when it came out in 2016, but it wasn't until he was laid off during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that he discovered its modding community.
At the time, he says, there were only about 800 or 900 available mods for the game, in contrast to the more than 28,000 now available on Nexus Mods. Hedegaard downloaded a bunch of them, and loved them so much that he started teaching himself how to make his own. He learned how to program, make pixel art, compose music, and create maps. All of this eventually led to Stardew Valley Expanded, a massive expansion for Stardew Valley that adds "28 new NPCs, 58 locations, 278 character events, 43 fish, reimagined vanilla areas, three farm maps, a reimagined world map reflecting all changes, new music, questlines, objects, crops, festivals, and many miscellaneous additions."
Why expand the already expansive Stardew Valley?
"Well, the way I looked at it is, Stardew Valley is already perfect the way it is. You don't need mods to enjoy Stardew Valley. I fell in love with version 1.2 of Stardew Valley, and that's just all Eric [Barone, creator]. That's entirely just Eric's work there, all himself, and you see what the game did to me. It made me want to make a huge mod for it, but when it came to me wanting to expand the valley, the way I went about it is I just wanted more of everything in the game. I wanted more NPCs, I wanted more locations, I wanted more crops, I wanted more character events, I wanted more machines, more items, more quests, more of everything. You can think of my mod as a well-rounded meal with all the meat and potatoes and green beans and maybe a cocktail on the side. It's the full show, a full meal of everything. There are some mods that just focus on some potatoes, there were some mods that just focused on some meat. A lot of work that goes into that, but I was fueled by my love for the game, my love for the community, and I had a lot of determination and a lot of excitement about the game in general that just fueled my desire to add everything that I did over all these years."
Stardew Valley Expanded first released in 2019, and at the time included three dozen new character events, three new locations, redesigned some base game maps. Hedegaard was going to stop there, but the mod started to blow up. It became so popular, he didn't want to leave it there. So he made it even bigger. He was in the process of working on version 1.15 of the mod, when his life was suddenly upended.
"My car got stolen and I was screwed, because I didn't have theft insurance on it and I was in a hole, and not to mention I had all my student loans I had to pay off still," Hedegaard explains. "I'm just like, 'What am I going to do?' I was modding full time, but modding full time, I was making a bit of money from it, but it's enough money to pay for food and rent, not pay for my student loans and pay for a new car. I like Christmas, I like buying Christmas gifts for my family and friends. It's like, 'What am I going to do? What am I going to do?'"
It was then that Hedegaard did something astonishing. He reached out to Barone, and asked him for a job.
"I was just like, 'You miss every shot you don't take.' So I went to the office and it was like, 'Yeah, do you want to hire me?'"
I was just like, 'You miss every shot you don't take.' So I went to the office and it was like, 'Yeah, do you want to hire me?'This isn't quite as crazy as it sounds. Hedegaard did already know Barone – they had hung out 3-4 times before, he says, describing them at that point as "acquaintances." They also both lived in the Seattle area, so it's not like he flew across the country to do this.
Even more shocking was that Barone entertained the idea. He told Hedegaard that he'd have to think about it. Then, just a few days later, Hedegaard received a job offer.
"I remember that day fondly, it was one of the best days of my life," he says. "At that moment, my life changed. My life had already changed when I had first started playing Stardew Valley, it had changed when I had first released my mod, and then the other time it changed was when Eric hired me that day."
That's how Hedegaard came to be employed by ConcernedApe, LLC and working on the next update to Stardew Valley. Hedegaard was also able to complete version 1.15 of Stardew Valley Expanded, which he considered a "finished" product. He's still providing bug fixes to the mod as needed, and is planning on updating the mod to be compatible with the future 1.7 update when it lands.
But other than that, he's fully devoted to Stardew Valley itself now. The game, its creator, and the job that he now holds and loves have transformed his life in the best possible way, he says.
"I think that this is what I was born to do, it's like my fate or my destiny," he says. "I wasn't meant to be an accountant working at Joja Corp, going in with a suit and tie in downtown Seattle, because I was really starting to feel like… I'd go home and I'm like, 'I don't want to do this anymore. I wish I would get a letter from Grandpa,' and you know what? Eric gave me that letter from Grandpa. And it changed my life. His game, what he made, working for him, working with this team, everything that Stardew Valley has given to me has improved my life so much and it's made me so happy. Part of my development process is I just want to give all that love and happiness back to the community and to the world and to keep creating… I like seeing people be happy, I like seeing people playing this game, seeing people come together.
"...I feel like, as time goes on, more and more and more people will play. Heck, even 20 years from now, there will be even more millions of people who have discovered the game. What's crazy is Stardew Valley is 10 years old. In year one, year two, some people had kids, they had babies, and eight years later, their kids are now playing Stardew Valley. The next generation of players are playing Stardew Valley. It's crazy. Eric and I and the whole team, we deeply understand how much Stardew Valley means to people, and that's why we always want to do right by the community at every turn, every possibility. And like I've been saying, to give all that love and happiness back that we've gotten."
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
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