Stardew Valley developer splits with publisher, strikes out on his own

Eric Barone, the one-man creative team behind Stardew Valley, is now wearing a second hat: publisher. Barone, also known as ConcernedApe, wrote on the farming simulation game’s news blog that he will now serve as both lead developer and publisher for the game (on most platforms, anyway).

As of Dec. 14, Barone will take over publishing duties from Chucklefish, the U.K.-based company that helped bring Stardew Valley to consoles. But Chucklefish isn’t completely out of the picture; it will still be in charge of the game’s Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android versions. That leaves Barone in charge of the Linux, Mac, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One and Windows versions.

It sounds like the breakup is amicable, ending a partnership forged prior to Stardew Valley’s initial PC release all the way back in 2013. Barone acknowledged the amount of effort the publisher put into realizing his vision of the project as part of the post.

“When I first released Stardew Valley, I was a complete novice to the video game industry,” he wrote. “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.”

For as much as Chucklefish has done, however, Barone said he’s ready to go truly independent and handle things on his own. Chucklefish added a comment to the post to wish Barone well as he embarks upon this next phase, and noted that it’s still working to bring multiplayer to the Switch version — and a port of Stardew Valley to Android users — as soon as possible.