'Stardew Valley' Creator Splits with Publisher, Moves to Self-Publishing

Stardew Valley will soon be self-published on most platforms after its developer announced a split from the publisher.

Created by Eric Barone, better known as "ConcernedApe" in his updates about the farming sim game, announced his intent to self-publish the game on the majority of platforms it's available for. Chucklefish is currently the publisher for the game and has been for several years, but as of December 14th, the publisher will only be working on the Nintendo Switch and mobile platforms.

Barone posted on the Stardew Valley site to announced the transition to self-publishing and recalled the ways Chucklefish assisted him when he was just starting out with the game.

"When I first released Stardew Valley, I was a complete novice to the video game industry," Barone said in his update. "Chucklefish, as my publisher, oversaw the distribution, console ports and translations of the game. They set up the official wiki and helped me redesign the website, to great effect. And of course,Tom Coxon did amazing work adding network code to the game, making multiplayer a reality."

Barone added that he felt self-publishing was the goal of most indie developers and said he's excited to be at a point where he feels capable to self-publish his game.

The multiplayer component of the game that Barone mentioned at the end is the latest in a series of changes Barone's implemented, a feature that players have been anticipating for some time. Barone had been keeping players updated on the status of the co-op multiplayer feature for all platforms and teased that he'd have more announcements related to Stardew Valley soon.

Chucklefish commented on the split from Barone within the game creator's update and said it was looking forward to continuing work on the game's various versions that it'll still publish. The publisher also teased that the multiplayer update for the Nintendo Switch version is currently in submission for the features to be tested.

"We are proud to be part of the Stardew Valley story and wish ConcernedApe every success with his new self-publishing venture," Chucklefish said. "We will carry on working closely together and are particularly excited to be continuing to publish the versions of Stardew Valley for Nintendo Switch and Mobile, including the upcoming Switch Multiplayer update (in submission now) and new Android version which we know many of you are looking forward to!"

Barone's shift to self-publishing will take effect on December 14th.