Stardew Valley is probably the most famous Harvest Moon clone in the world. The game has seen much commercial success considering the fact that it was developed by a single person as a side project. This open-ended game was praised for its freedom and atmosphere and well, the player count and sales reflect that. Now, more than six years after its release it’s time to revisit Stardew Valley player count and see how much interest the game still generates. Let’s take a look at how many people play Stardew Valley.
Currently, 37,443 play Stardew Valley on Steam alone according to the data provided by Steam Charts. This number although impressive for a six-year-old game is nowhere near the peak the game has seen in January 2021 when the number of 94,479 players has been recorded throughout the month. Decreasing interest is normal and typical for a game of this type and age, the fact that the game sold 20 million copies by 2023 still makes it a commercial success and one of the best sellers.
Now that you know how many players are still playing Stardew Valley it’s time to analyze different stats. If you’re interested in more details, stay with us and keep reading!
Why was Stardew Valley so popular?
Stardew Valley was single-handedly developed by Eric ConcernedApe Barone over the course of four years. He used a lot of fan feedback to implement some interesting additional features into the game. Somewhere in the middle of the development, he was approached by the publisher Chucklefish which allowed him to polish the game before the full release. Even though the collaboration was successful Barone eventually regained the right to publish the game.
The game was a massive success story, all the shortcomings of the games like Harvest Moon were addressed and improved. The players praised the visuals, atmosphere, world-building, NPC depth, and overall storyline.
There’s nothing better than a well-made open-ended game and Stardew Valley was exactly that. What made the game amazing also was the fact that it was for the most part designed and executed by a single person with a dream. Nowadays it’s hard to find a simulation game “top list” without Stardew Valley being on it, and Game Horizon as well covered the game and its mechanics extensively in the past.
Having said that it was expected for Stardew Valley to remain among the most played and popular games of the genre. But did it truly remain so? let’s take a look at what the numbers say.
How many people play Stardew Valley in 2023?
At the time of the writing of this post, Stardew Valley has seen 34,494.8 players on average over the last 30 days according to the data provided by Steam Charts. These numbers, of course, speak only for the Steam version of the game so if we take all other versions and consoles that it’s available on into account the number is likely much higher. At the moment 37,443 players are playing Stardew Valley.
While the number seems high considering the age of the game it’s nothing compared to the recorded all-time peak that happened in January 2021 when 94,479 players have been recorded to play the game over the period of that month alone.
A more detailed trend of decreasing interest in the game can be seen in the detailed table below which shows us the data regarding player count for the period of the last six months.
| Month | Avg. players | Gain/loss | Peak players |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last 30 days | 34,494.8 | +21.48% | 59,095 |
| December 2022 | 28,396.5 | +18.83% | 48,081 |
| November | 23,896.0 | +5.44% | 37,232 |
| October 2022 | 22,663.5 | -8.44% | 35,033 |
| September 2022 | 24,753.5 | -21.17% | 38,451 |
| August 2022 | 31,402.3 | -19.64% | 46,813 |
| June 2022 | 31,775.8 | +13.34% | 49,366 |
As you can see the game lost a significant number of players between the months of August and October and has just recently started to recover with November and December being positive.
How many people stream Stardew Valley?
According to the data provided by Twitch stats, at the moment of writing this post, Stardew Valley has 833 live viewers and 73 live channels streaming the game. The average number is somewhat higher standing at 1,570 average viewers over the last 7 days and 154 live streaming the related content. All those numbers amount to 263,159 hours of watched content over the last seven days.
When it comes to popularity Stardew Valley is #113 which is an ok standing for an older game.
This is, however, nothing compared to an all-time high that happened on June 1st, 2021 when the peak viewer count was reached amounting to 99,519 viewers watching Stardew Valley-related content.
More detailed numbers can be seen in the table below showing data regarding viewers and channels over the period of 6 months.
| Month | Concurrent viewers average | Gain/loss | Concurrent streams average | Gain/loss | Hours watched | Gain/loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 2023 | 1.5K | +6.2% | 149 | +36.7% | 326K | -69.3% |
| December 2022 | 1.4K | +18.5% | 109 | -4.4% | 1.06M | +22.2% |
| November 2022 | 1.1K | -3.3% | 121 | +9% | 508K | -35.7% |
| October 2022 | 1.2K | -22.4% | 111 | -21.3% | 790K | -25.4% |
| September 2022 | 1.5K | +2.1% | 141 | -11.9% | 1.06M | -2.2% |
| August 2022 | 1.5K | -35.2% | 160 | -14.9% | 1.08M | -33.8% |
| June 2022 | 2.8K | +6.3% | 189 | +6.8% | 1.98M | +3.3% |
The data clearly indicate a downward trend regarding interest in the game. This reflects the most drastically in the total hours watched category, the game lost more than half of the content watched in the span of the last three months.
Will Stardew Valley be popular again?
Stardew Valley will most certainly regain a fraction of its popularity when the next content update hits the players. Update 1.6 was promised to launch before the end of 2022 and in the most recent tweet, Eric Baron announced that it actually doesn’t have a set date regarding the update only that it’s going to be out when it’s ready.
The slow progress is nothing when you take into account the new game that Barone is working on, Haunted Chocolatier. You can read all about the new project here. Whether the game is connected to Stardew Valley or not remains to be seen. However, we can see that the style is similar and the release of the game will most likely lead to increased interest in Stardew Valley as well.
