Forty-three thousand players right now. Ninety-nine percent positive across nearly half a million reviews. Tenth on Steam’s top-sellers chart. Not bad for a farming sim built by one person that launched over a decade ago.

Stardew Valley is currently 50% off — $7.49 down from $14.99 — and it’s climbing the Steam charts again. The discount helps. But this game never needed discounts to move units.

According to Steam data as of May 2026, Stardew Valley holds a 99% positive rating from 455,995 reviews — 450,763 positive, just 5,232 negative. Metacritic: 89. Those aren’t launch-window spikes or review-bomb recoveries. That’s ten years of sustained approval.

AAA studios spend hundreds of millions on titles that chart for two weeks, bleed players by month two, and land in discount bins before the seasonal patch cycle finishes. ConcernedApe shipped a pixel-art farming RPG in 2016 and it’s still competing with Day One releases for shelf space.

Developer Eric Barone marked the game’s 10-year anniversary in February 2026, noting on the official Stardew Valley blog that the game has sold 50 million copies “with no sign of slowing down.” A new update is in the works, according to Barone, which should pull another wave of returning players back to the valley.

No microtransactions. No battle pass. No seasonal content treadmill. One developer, one game, ongoing free updates for a decade. The top player reviews tell you everything — one reviewer with over 500 hours played simply wrote “the mayor kinda smells 10/10 game tho.”

In an industry addicted to extraction, Stardew Valley keeps giving. That’s not nostalgia talking. That’s the scoreboard.

Sources