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Barone handled updates to the game himself for several years after its release before recruiting a small team to assist him in 2019, and has continued to support it while developing a second game, Haunted Chocolatier, a shop-management title announced in 2021. Stardew Valley received favorable reviews and has won or been nominated for numerous industry awards, including the Breakthrough Award at the 2016 Golden Joystick Awards; in 2025 it became the highest-rated game on Steam according to the user-review aggregator Steam250. Forbes named Barone to its "30 Under 30: Games" list in 2017 for his work on the game. He has also released albums of the game's music, co-authored an official cookbook, and organized two concert tours based on its soundtrack, and has donated to educational, environmental, and open-source software causes, including his alma mater and the game development framework MonoGame.

• Name — Eric Barone • Other Names — ConcernedApe • Birth Name — Eric Lorenz Barone • Born — 3 December 1987 • Birthplace — Los Angeles, California, U.S. • Education — University of Washington Tacoma • Occupation — * Video game developer • video game designer • composer • musician • Years Active — 2008–present • Citizenship — American • Known for — Stardew Valley • Website — concernedape.com

Barone was born on December 3, 1987, in Los Angeles, California, and spent his childhood in Auburn, Washington, a suburb in the Seattle metropolitan area. He has cited the Harvest Moon series as a childhood favorite that continued to influence him into adulthood. Although he had no formal musical training, Barone played music from a young age and was a member of several bands, including a nu metal band and an experimental pop band, for whose album he created his first video game, a LucasArts-inspired point-and-click game. Barone graduated from the University of Washington Tacoma in 2011 with a degree in computer science, but did not at first consider game development as a career. Unable to find work after graduating, he began developing Stardew Valley as a way to practice programming in C#, intending to show the finished game to potential employers on his résumé.

• Illustration — Barone's ConcernedApe logo

• Illustration — Barone speaking on the development of Stardew Valley at Hackfort 2019 Barone began working on Stardew Valley in 2012 and released it in 2016. He created the game on his own, serving as its designer, programmer, animator, artist, composer, and writer, and worked an average of 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for four and a half years to complete it. He released the game for PC before porting it to consoles and other platforms, and has been assisted in its development by a small team since 2019. As of February 2026, the game had sold more than 50 million copies. In 2016, Barone released the game's music as the album Stardew Valley: Original Soundtrack. On August 15, 2020, he followed it with Symphonic Tale: The Place I Truly Belong (Music from Stardew Valley), an orchestral album of 15 tracks from the game, directed by Kentaro Sato and performed by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. In February 2021, Barone and board game designer Cole Medeiros released Stardew Valley: The Board Game, a cooperative board game adaptation. The first printing sold out, and it returned to sale in November 2021 with revised cards and rules. Barone collaborated with Norihiko Hibino on Prescription for Sleep, an album series that remixes video game soundtracks with piano and saxophone; the Stardew Valley installment was released in May 2021 and includes 10 tracks from the game's original soundtrack alongside one new track, "Beauty in the Seasons". Barone later announced two concert tours: Stardew Valley: Festival of Seasons in October 2023, featuring a selection of the game's music performed live by a chamber orchestra, and Stardew Valley: Symphony of Seasons in November 2024, featuring new arrangements of the game's music performed by a 35-piece orchestra. Music that Barone composed for Stardew Valley has also featured in several episodes of Press A to Play, a video game music radio program on Northwest Public Broadcasting. Barone co-authored The Official Stardew Valley Cookbook, released on May 14, 2024, which adapts more than 50 recipes from the game. In July 2026, Barone announced a companion book, The Official Stardew Valley Crochet Book, co-written with Ryan Novak and crochet designer Megan Lapp and scheduled for release by Random House Worlds on January 26, 2027; the book contains 25 crochet patterns that can be used to create more than 45 amigurumi projects. In July 2026, Wizards of the Coast announced a crossover between Stardew Valley and its collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, unveiled at MagicCon Amsterdam as the Secret Lair series Superdrop of the Moonlight Jellies. The crossover comprises three card sets, Welcome to Stardew Valley, Life in Pelican Town, and A Flicker in the Deep, for which Barone created original pixel art, including a new land card themed around the game. The sets were released on July 27, 2026.

In October 2021, Barone announced that he was developing a new game, Haunted Chocolatier, in which the player runs a chocolate shop. The game places a greater emphasis on combat than Stardew Valley did, and Barone has said that almost everything in it, including the combat, was coded and drawn from scratch. Barone has continued to release updates for Stardew Valley while working on the new game.

• Illustration — Barone meeting fans at Hackfort 2019 In 2008, Barone released his first game, 17CF Quest, a promotional tie-in for the music group 17 Colorful Feathers; its main character later appeared as a piece of furniture in Stardew Valley. In 2011, he created a comic strip series, Wumbus World. In 2014, Barone took a month-long break from Stardew Valley to assemble a small mobile game for Android. Titled Air Pear, it was released on March 6, 2014; players guide a purple pear on a hoverboard between obstacles while competing for a high score. In 2022, Barone animated a music video for "Many Mirrors" by the indie pop band Alvvays, his first work in 3D animation. In 2024, Barone said that he played in a Seattle-based steelpan band. The following year, he voiced a character in Hollow Knight: Silksong.

While developing Stardew Valley, Barone moved from his parents' home to Capitol Hill, Seattle, with his girlfriend, Amber Hageman. Hageman worked two jobs to support them, and Barone worked part-time as an evening usher at the Paramount Theatre.

In May 2021, Barone funded upgrades to the Giving Garden on the University of Washington Tacoma campus, including watering systems and a greenhouse, and his donations established a paid student coordinator position; the garden donates more than 200 lb of food each year. In 2024, he was listed as a donor of at least $25,000 to the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that works to conserve the 1500000 acre corridor running from Seattle to Ellensburg along Interstate 90. In December 2025, MonoGame announced that Barone had supported the project with an initial donation of $125,000 and a commitment to donate $1,250 monthly.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 2008 — 17CF Quest — Creator — Promotional tie-in for the music group 17 Colorful Feathers • 2014 — Air Pear — Creator — Android mobile game • 2016 — Stardew Valley — Sole designer, programmer, animator, artist, composer, writer — Farm life simulation game • Haunted Chocolatier — Creator — In development

• 2019 – The Land of Crows (thanks and greetings) • 2021 – Stardew Valley: The Board Game (co-designer, with Cole Medeiros; board game adaptation) • 2024 – Fields of Mistria (thank you for inspiring us to make our own contribution) • 2025 – Hollow Knight: Silksong (voice role) • 2026 – Magic: The Gathering (Secret Lair series Superdrop of the Moonlight Jellies; artist)

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 2016 — Stardew Valley: Original Soundtrack — Composer — Original soundtrack album for Stardew Valley • 2020 — Symphonic Tale: The Place I Truly Belong (Music from Stardew Valley) — Source composer — Orchestral album directed by Kentaro Sato and performed by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra; 15 tracks • 2021 — Prescription for Sleep: Stardew Valley — Composer — Collaboration with Norihiko Hibino; includes new track "Beauty in the Seasons"

• 2023 – Stardew Valley: Festival of Seasons • 2024 – Stardew Valley: Symphony of Seasons

Stardew Valley received favorable reviews on release. The PC version holds a score of 89 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 30 critic reviews, which the site classifies as "generally favorable". OpenCritic rates it "Mighty", with an average score of 90 across 76 critic reviews and a recommendation from 99 percent of critics, placing it in the top one percent of games tracked by the site. In 2019, GamesRadar+ included the game among those that defined the 2010s, praising its ability to draw players in over hundreds of hours. GamesIndustry.biz named the game one of its Games of the Year for 2024, following the release of its 1.6 update. In July 2025, it became the highest-rated game on Steam according to the user-review aggregator Steam250, displacing Portal 2, which had held the top position for 14 years. By the game's tenth anniversary in February 2026, its sales had surpassed those of the best-selling individual entries in franchises such as Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda, and Call of Duty. In December 2016, Gamasutra named Barone one of its ten best game developers of the year, crediting him with single-handedly reinvigorating a genre long dominated by the Story of Seasons series. That same year, PC Gamer gave Stardew Valley its "Spirit of the PC" award, calling it a heartwarming technical achievement given that its sole developer handled the design, coding, art, and music himself. Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of Harvest Moon, has praised Stardew Valley as carrying on his own series' legacy, and Barone has described a signed copy of Wada's original Harvest Moon cartridge as one of his most treasured possessions.

• Illustration — Barone at PAX West 2016, the year Stardew Valley was released Inverse and Destructoid both credited Stardew Valley with revitalizing the farming-simulation genre and helping popularize cozy games more broadly, more than two decades after the Harvest Moon series established the genre. Writing for Digital Trends, Tomas Franzese argued that although the original Harvest Moon games established the farming simulation format, Stardew Valley became the standard against which later entries in the genre, including newer Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons titles, are measured. PC Gamer writers Wes Fenlon and Kara Phillips similarly described the game as the foundation of the modern farming simulation genre, noting that new releases in the genre are routinely compared to it; they pointed to titles such as Disney Dreamlight Valley and Coral Island as among the games that followed in its wake.