Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

12/31/2025 at 5:19:43 PM

Not without reason:

Stardew Valley, which has been sold to millions of gamers, has been created using the free MonoGame engine. So ConcernedApe is giving back to the open source software which made his commercial success possible, like commercial parties should.

by mindcrash

12/31/2025 at 5:29:24 PM

Gifts do not confer obligation. Copying deprives the original party of nothing. Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”. This idea that anyone making money with free software somehow owes the original authors anything (or “should” donate a portion of their profits) is ridiculous.

If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead of giving it away for free as a gift.

By releasing software under free software licenses you are explicitly stating that you do not expect or anticipate payment for it. The licenses (that they freely chose) are clear. Free software, in addition to being free as in speech, is also always free as in beer.

My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck?

by sneak

12/31/2025 at 5:40:17 PM

> Gifts do not confer obligation.

Remind me, which Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is this?

There's not much argument to be had. You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view.

> My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck?

Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.

by bevr1337

12/31/2025 at 6:36:46 PM

> Remind me, which Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is this?

You made my morning with this quip.

by not_a_bot_4sho

12/31/2025 at 7:27:54 PM

How about #59: "Free advice is seldom cheap." Because you're basically saying that there's no such thing as free, and it's simply an 'unclarified financial contract to be consolidated at a later time.' Quark would approve! If I'm paying for a friend's lunch it's because I want to, not because I expect anything from him in the future. And beyond that, I do not consider downloading something somebody has released for free as establishing a relationship.

by somenameforme

1/1/2026 at 6:32:36 AM

I prefer #68 here: “Compassion is no substitute for a profit.” The donation is compassionate; retaining it would be more profitable.

by altairprime

12/31/2025 at 9:38:46 PM

> You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view.

Nobody said it wouldn't be nice, but that it does not confer "obligation". This is the key word. I would argue a world where people do things because they want to, and not because they feel they have to, would actually generally be a nicer world to live in.

> Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.

Yes, and those sorts of relationships aren't really built on much if a gift obligates the other to repay. Why even buy lunch then? It just becomes this back and forth obligation and it is wearing and actually erodes the relationship slightly, if anything. I would argue a true gift is one that does not obligate the other party to reciprocate. That does NOT mean it would not be a decent thing to do something nice (for the other person OR someone else), but just that it is not obligated. The person should not feel a weight to do so. Once this weight is lifted, it is actually very freeing, and it strengthens the relationship, if anything.

by nu11ptr

1/1/2026 at 2:08:51 AM

This is exactly it.

I don't buy someone lunch with an implicit expectation that they'll buy me lunch in the future. That's tacky and gross. I buy lunch because I wanted to buy them lunch, and if they decide to buy me lunch, I happily accept.

by skibidithink

1/1/2026 at 9:44:20 AM

Means you're not in the "many" segment. Doesn't mean many others are not in the "many" segment. I, myself, find reciprocation important even if not for identical "gifts".

by cteiosanu

1/1/2026 at 12:10:07 PM

I often reciprocate. Receiving a gift triggers some warm fuzzies and I try to make the other person happy as well.

If they say or act as if there's something expected? I'm returning that "gift". That's a bargaining chip, not a gift.

by skibidithink

1/1/2026 at 5:24:31 AM

> There's not much argument to be had.

Yes, there's no argument because you're incapable of coming up with an argument because you don't have anything to base it on. You're just responding emotionally and trying to slander them because you know that they made a good point and you hate that.

> You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view.

It is neither. It is a quite reasonable worldview that the vast majority of the population subscribes to and finds rather acceptable.

> Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.

This is a non-answer, because you know that the answer is "no", but you can't bear to say it because that would be admitting that your position is inconsistent, yet you can't assert that the answer is "yes" because that's obviously insane.

Thank you for so eloquently refuting all of your own arguments.

by throw10920

12/31/2025 at 7:09:05 PM

> Remind me, which Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is this?

Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition

by Ygg2

1/1/2026 at 9:43:50 AM

If there's an obligation, then it want really a gift.

by xnx

12/31/2025 at 6:24:19 PM

There really is no prize for being technically correct on this one.

Someone built this and is letting you have it. For free. There is no legal obligation or law of the universe here, sure, but if you're in the top 1% of benefactors of this pro bono work, you have the opportunity to do some good and make sure that others, like you, get the chance to benefit from this free work in the future.

There is a pretty straightforward argument to be made that this falls under the "with great power comes great opportunity" umbrella of moral reasoning, since this work empowered CA to create the game that earned him a lot of money.

by MildlySerious

12/31/2025 at 8:22:43 PM

If every gift one gives out comes with a moral obligation, it'd be pretty selfish to give gifts.

by skibidithink

12/31/2025 at 10:01:29 PM

>but if you're in the top 1% of benefactors of this pro bono work, you have the opportunity to do some good and make sure that others

Including, of course, oneself. Keeping the project you depend on running is good business.

by jimnotgym

1/1/2026 at 11:52:49 AM

> Someone built this and is letting you have it. For free.

That's the point of a FOSS license. You give the power back to the end users. This was purposefully chosen by the Monogame project.

by ekianjo

12/31/2025 at 7:09:40 PM

There is no moral obligation, either - that’s my point. They chose to give it away for free. It’s the author’s explicit decision that there is no obligation placed on recipients.

Giving a fake gift that comes with unspoken strings attached (and “keeping score” in your head) is the passive-aggressive, immoral act. If reciprocity is expected, it is definitionally not a gift.

Releasing software under a free software license is a choice to give a gift to the world. If the author wanted moral obligation strings attached, the license would say that.

by sneak

12/31/2025 at 7:49:25 PM

The license only says what you MUST and MUST NOT do. The comment you’re replying to talked about what they SHOULD do. These are different concepts and they are codified differently by humans: the former in licenses, the latter socially. You’re experiencing that process right now.

by nothrabannosir

1/1/2026 at 12:33:06 AM

That’s certainly not a legal principle of any kind. It’s like the 17 pieces of flair thing, if they want you to have more, they should tell you, we don’t need some weird unspoken guidelines related to licenses, it’s why we have the license.

If I get tremendous value out of MS office 365 but my agreement with MS charges me only $15/month, should I donate some extra to them because of how much it helps my business?

by andy99

1/1/2026 at 12:46:03 AM

> That’s certainly not a legal principle of any kind.

Correct!

Reread the original comment that kicked off this thread in that light and the overwhelming majority of replies and votes should hopefully make a lot more sense.

Edit: for the record:

> if they want you to have more, they should tell you, we don’t need some weird unspoken guidelines related to licenses,

Again check the original comment which wasn’t written by them but by a third party commenting on the state of a community.

Those unspoken guidelines aren’t any more or less weird than any other ones we share as humans. (Actually I’d say they’re far less so than most.)

by nothrabannosir

1/1/2026 at 5:51:52 AM

> the former in licenses, the latter socially. You’re experiencing that process right now.

No, he's not, because there's no social contract on the internet. Making these analogies between real-world communities and "the Internet" is an obviously stupid thing to do if you think about it for five seconds.

And not only is there no social contract on the Internet, but because of its nature there cannot be, and attempting (futilely) to implement one is extremely harmful.

So, as a result, the license is all there is. If you publish it as open-source, users have zero obligation to contribute. If you want revenue, then use a commercial license and sell it.

It should go without saying, but the insane mental backflips that open source advocates go to in order to make wild claims like this harms their position, not helps it. Don't make absurd statements to try to ignore the fact that asking for money for your software with an actual license is the only reasonable way to get money for your software - it'll just cause normal people to take the entire movement less seriously.

by throw10920

1/1/2026 at 7:54:14 PM

What is going on with the total lack of decorum in HN comments lately? Is this a new phenomenon or am I just now waking up to how incredibly rude some people here act towards strangers?

Is this a meta comment to demonstrate your belief that basic human mores don’t apply on the internet? Quite frankly I find it more of a refutation.

by nothrabannosir

1/1/2026 at 9:35:28 PM

Your response that contains only ad-hominem character attacks and fails to address even the weakest of my statements conclusively proves that your points are indefensible.

Neither is my comment particularly offensive. You seem to have trouble differentiating between refuting someone's points and attacking their character.

Maybe that's why you attacked me, because you wanted to argue with my points but can't tell the difference between the two?

by throw10920

1/1/2026 at 9:47:45 PM

I didn't address them because I don't want to :)

You're a fascinating character. If you're ever in New York let me know because I would love to see how you are in real life. I'm actually quite sure we'll get along after a bit of alignment! Weirder things have happened.

Stay blessed, my friend.

by nothrabannosir

1/1/2026 at 10:05:19 PM

> I didn't address them because I don't want to :)

Ahhh, yes, of course. Because the first thing that someone with a good response does is to never use it (especially if it's a cause they feel strongly about) and instead attack the character of the one who poked holes in their initial argument. Silly me.

by throw10920

12/31/2025 at 8:03:32 PM

"You are being counseled at this very moment" :-))

by oblio

12/31/2025 at 5:37:32 PM

If your friend keeps taking you out to lunch and you never return the favor, he’s probably going to stop.

by wilde

12/31/2025 at 6:48:48 PM

This guy would probably cancel, anyway, because his friend didn't want to pay him for driving them to the restaurant.

by DrewADesign

12/31/2025 at 6:53:25 PM

I'm giving the pleasure of being in my incredible presence why should I do that for free?

by collingreen

12/31/2025 at 8:55:50 PM

I'm reminded of this story in the New Yorker: https://archive.ph/wNydh

by jaggederest

12/31/2025 at 5:51:13 PM

I think this comes off a bit too strong (as well as the replies to this to be fair)

The example isn't quite accurate. If a friend bought you lunch, the social norm of reciprocity would incline you towards buying them lunch in the future (i.e part of your paycheck)

Free open source software is a public good. While there is no obligation to give back, giving back helps that public good become more useful to other people (including your future self). I'm against making contribution an obligation, but I'm not against light social pressure upon philanthropists who have the means (which is what the parent comment was doing).

by Sajarin

12/31/2025 at 7:10:32 PM

In the lunch example, reciprocation would be releasing additional software under free software licenses, not payments.

There should be zero social pressure, as gifts do not convey obligation. It was the software author’s explicit choice when licensing and publishing the software to make clear that payment is not expected.

by sneak

12/31/2025 at 7:41:28 PM

Gifts do confer obligations. This is widely agreed upon in human society. If you ignore this there will be consequences, just no legal ones.

by tormeh

12/31/2025 at 8:18:47 PM

Do you routinely struggle in social situations? Do you frequently have people tell you that you misinterpreted social cues?

You are correct that no legal obligation was passed, but generally people feel that if you got something from a community that helped you succeed greatly you do have an obligation to throw something back to the organization to help it help others.

If you don't, that'ss generally classified by people as being a jackass

by lovich

12/31/2025 at 5:36:52 PM

Copyleft removes legal obligation but we're free to confer a social obligation.

by prisenco

12/31/2025 at 5:40:25 PM

It's nice to give back to people, no matter the amount.

https://framerusercontent.com/images/9GsFxfDtmRFpfgGlNH61QsX...

He also needs that tool to stay alive for the future, even if not considering the past.

It's a bit better position for everyone.

by rvnx

1/1/2026 at 12:24:37 AM

I agree with this - I have often seen people get upset because someone used a project that was explicitly licensed to allow them to do whatever they wanted with it, with no obligation, in a way that they don’t like, or without doing something that’s apparently expected of them. This happened e.g. with whatever Amazon services wrapped open source projects.

The only way anyone knows your intent as a developer is in the restrictions and terms you release under. There are open source contributors that really want nothing. It makes no sense to say you want nothing and then get upset when you don’t get something.

If someone doesn’t like Apache 2.0, MIT, or BSD, there are lots of other options they can release the source under, or they can start a proprietary software business.

The donation here is great obviously, “paying it forward” is great, but so is using software under the terms its writer told you you could.

by andy99

12/31/2025 at 7:09:40 PM

What do you think about putting the shopping cart back in its corral?

by TomatoCo

1/1/2026 at 12:36:16 AM

If you do that, then you're taking jobs away.

by knowitnone3

12/31/2025 at 5:52:57 PM

> My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck?

No but you owe him lunch next time. Wait till you find out that you have to share your birthday cake on your birthday.

by qmmmur

12/31/2025 at 5:34:34 PM

It is the moral thing to do.

by kwanbix

12/31/2025 at 7:13:00 PM

I disagree. The moral thing to do would be to respect the stated wishes of the author of the software, who made clear when they published it that no payments of any kind are expected.

If I gave you a gift and you tried to give me money, I would be offended.

I’m not saying free software publishers wouldn’t accept donations - just that publishing free software is giving a gift to the world, and there is NO moral obligation placed on recipients. That’s the point of free software.

by sneak

12/31/2025 at 8:31:25 PM

How is this the bridge you're hiding under?

You are simultaneously arguing for 'moral' subjectivity while utilizing the strawman of 'moral obligation'. Who would enforce this 'obliging' if the subject of morality is still up for debate?

You are tying yourself in embarrassing knots over someone spreading their wealth, unsolicited, to people who helped them achieve it? Why? What's the end goal?

Go argue with someone about the morality of environmental impacts of tech... or something...

by allyouseed

12/31/2025 at 7:46:53 PM

What can I say. That you can not see it speaks volumes about your moral compas.

by kwanbix

12/31/2025 at 6:11:34 PM

There is no obligation, but since they find the project useful and are making money from it, they want to make sure it is not abandoned. The best way to ensure that is to fund its development.

This also gives them direct access to the devs and can request new features or bug fixes that impact them to be prioritized. Everyone benefits. It's probably much cheaper to make a contribution than to do that in house and upstream the changes.

by drnick1

1/1/2026 at 12:47:08 AM

A lot of people arguing the philosophy here, but I'm willing to bet that sneak simply had very strong negative experiences around gift giving growing up.

For a lot of people, a gift is not a gift but an invitation to abuse, and it's hard to be rational or pro-social about it when you were on the receiving end of that as a child.

by AussieWog93

12/31/2025 at 5:37:40 PM

This ignores the practical economics of open source. I'm not sure what you suggest by jumping around definitions like this.

by poly2it

12/31/2025 at 7:36:19 PM

Upvoting because you’re correct. Commenting because you’re wrong.

Donate to the F/OSS projects that you used to make it big.

by miiiiiike

1/1/2026 at 3:23:39 PM

> Gifts do not confer obligation.

Technically not, but giving back is a nice thing to do

by bean469

12/31/2025 at 5:51:49 PM

> Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”

You're correct about that. The free software itself doesn't confer any responsibility. But the free software exists inside other contexts. Social/moral context. There're also future contexts for you or humanity. For example, if developing free software proves to be a sustainable model for people to do, you might get other projects LIKE the Blender Foundation to crop up in the future. You might benefit from them directly, or benefit from them by enjoying the things people produce with them. Also, if it's a tool that you like to use, maybe you just want that specific tool to continue to improve.

by ralusek

12/31/2025 at 5:38:09 PM

You have a social obligation to buy your friend lunch sometime.

by sanex

12/31/2025 at 6:20:53 PM

Not under capitalism, sure. But traditionally gift economies worked exactly because people understood that gifts also imbue a burden of responsibility. Not necessarily in repayment but to honor the gift and pay the good deed forward instead of simply enriching yourself.

by hnbad

12/31/2025 at 6:07:11 PM

What is this, the lawyer planet from Farscape? You shouldn't need a contract to be prosocial.

by Kye

12/31/2025 at 3:52:09 PM

I don't want to assume, but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios (spare Valve). This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame.

by juujian

12/31/2025 at 4:12:54 PM

Epic Games has a program called MegaGrants where they give a bunch of money to various projects.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants

For example they gave $250k to the Godot game engine project in 2020.

https://godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-was-awarded-epi...

by QuantumNomad_

12/31/2025 at 4:52:11 PM

Also notably $1.2 million to the Blender Foundation.

by mminer237

12/31/2025 at 4:25:11 PM

I wouldn't call anything Epic Games does charity: it's all empire expansion for them.

by mjg2

12/31/2025 at 4:54:13 PM

How does the Godot donation expand their empire? Other than get more people into game development?

by closingreunion

12/31/2025 at 5:47:21 PM

I suspect they also hope developer choice gets reframed from "Unity or Unreal" to "Godot or Unreal." In other words: Unity gets bumped out of the picture since Godot can do what it does and is open source, while Unreal stays comfortably in the hyperrealism/high-end perch.

by alexissantos

1/1/2026 at 3:23:22 PM

Unity is Unreal Engine's biggest competitor by far. Godot competes with Unity (mostly for 2D games) but is at least a decade off being any threat to Unreal.

So yes, funding Godot is A Nice Thing To Do but it also conveniently puts a bit of pressure on Unity, their biggest competitor, without impacting their own business.

Also, if you believe Matthew Ball's take[0] then Epic is all-in on fostering as many gamedev-ish creators as it can so that it can loop them all into making content for its metaverse later. As you alluded to, in the long term funding a FOSS game engine which is focused on ease of use helps that too.

[0]: https://www.matthewball.co/all/epicgamesprimermaster

by caspar

12/31/2025 at 5:18:34 PM

It expands their empire like Microsoft pledging to "support" Open Source: it's disingenuous, self-serving, and develops a "claim" of authority over the sector. It allows them, the makers of Unreal Engine, to develop a business relationship with their competition and influence the trajectory on one of only major alternatives in order to control the market more.

If Epic Games really cared about Godot, they would align more with their values in-house. Their M&A drives the organization like a propeller.

by mjg2

12/31/2025 at 5:25:10 PM

The other option is Epic is the same as now but Godot gets no money

by croes

12/31/2025 at 8:52:32 PM

It's all hypothetical for a transaction 5 years in the past. The future you propose is one where Epic is not actually the same: they have more liquid capital towards the mission their stakeholders decide, and less influence on Godot.

However, their stakeholders decided circa 2019/2020 that they want to influence the development of Godot and spent their money that way. Corporate donations aren't at a whim like us individuals who spend $3/mo on Wikipedia or a food pantry, it's considered by the executive team, calculated and green-lit by their accounting team.

by mjg2

12/31/2025 at 5:00:59 PM

All of this is self-serving, even from the Stardew Valley dev. It’s win-win.

by madeofpalk

12/31/2025 at 5:20:26 PM

I disagree. I think ConcernedApe is actually genuine with his charity and we should see this as a standard for corporations to follow.

by mjg2

12/31/2025 at 5:45:55 PM

I'm confused. What exactly makes his charity genuine vs Epic's charity "disingenuous"?

by squigz

12/31/2025 at 8:44:22 PM

Ostensibly what u/skibidithink replied. We should have a healthy distrust of international corporations giving for unapparent reasons beyond being in the same sector. We can gesture about how a gift has no obligations, but no one gets into business to not make money, and true charity is without obligation.

ConcernedApe donated to give back to the foundation he came from, while Epic is out for global domination in the virtual entertainment sector.

by mjg2

12/31/2025 at 9:09:27 PM

Tim Sweeney also has indie game developer roots; can’t he give to projects in the same spirit as how he started?

by 1123581321

12/31/2025 at 9:38:07 PM

Sure, and maybe he does. I think there's a difference between Epic doing it as a company, for which they would likely expect to extract some value from the contribution, and Sweeney doing it as an individual.

by drfuzzy89

1/1/2026 at 11:13:46 PM

They’re both making self-serving donations. There’s nothing wrong with that.

by madeofpalk

12/31/2025 at 11:35:17 PM

Epic - like every other company in the world right now, particularly tech companies - was built on open-source software. Just because they may or may not have used those specific tools does not mean their desire to give back to that community is evil.

I'm really still just trying to see the whole "Epic is donating money to take over the world!" argument here. What obligation do they get from these donations, exactly?

by squigz

12/31/2025 at 11:00:16 PM

Stardew seems to make choices consistent with the gaming community's interest, such as continued free updates and DLC along with reasonable pricing, messaging, and scope.

Epic values exclusive titles, walled gardens, poor support, and a scumbag CEO who will stomp over every market he can to get his next 8 Billion.

They ruined Rocket League, a game I purchased on steam while supporting Psyonix, which is now unusable until I agree to give them my PID and create an account. It's so egregious you can't even play bots offline. Every goal will move focus to a popped up browser window requesting account creation.

Everyone can decide where to draw the line on personal support, but to act like Epic is just being given shade because it's a corporation (as the comments below implied), is inaccurate.

by slumberlust

12/31/2025 at 8:20:35 PM

Indie good, big company bad

by skibidithink

12/31/2025 at 5:33:32 PM

Charitable donations that are self-serving aren’t non-genuine. The money still spends the same.

by sneak

12/31/2025 at 6:00:20 PM

Look, it's really nice that you maintained WooCommerce for so many years.

I know you might be tempted to move on to do something else, but I really need my shop to keep working.

So, here is the deal: I am going to send you a 'donation' of 500 USD now, and then a monthly recurring 'gift.'

Contractually? You have no obligation to work, and I have no obligation to pay.

But if you stop working on WooCommerce, I will obviously have to stop the donations.

Sounds cool?

The output of that is rather positive here though, but it would be naive to not see the self-interest.

by rvnx

12/31/2025 at 6:34:31 PM

Every action is self-interested if you squint enough

by _vertigo

12/31/2025 at 4:26:18 PM

So? What Valve does isn't charity either. It's weird that you even mention this word.

by raincole

12/31/2025 at 4:38:48 PM

Why is Valve's behavior relevant? I mention charity because that's what donations are. It's no secret Epic Games follows Microsoft's patterns for control of the industry.

by mjg2

12/31/2025 at 4:23:37 PM

Looks like they did literally nothing in 2024?

by badrequest

12/31/2025 at 4:01:37 PM

Valve contributes effort to Wine via Proton, and provides open source software like Steam Audio.

EA does something similar, and their EASTL is an opinionated and gaming-focused container and algorithms library that they maintain and made open source.

by dleslie

12/31/2025 at 4:04:10 PM

They’ve also paid tons to Igalia to develop features for them in open source projects.

by dcdc123

12/31/2025 at 5:26:51 PM

Many corporations are free-riding on the Open Source they use. As most of us are honestly.

But I think people cynically underestimate the value of the contributions corporations do make and fail to understand just how much of the software we enjoy is only possible due to corporate funding.

Igalia may be a good example as most of have are not even familiar with them. But the Linux distro that I use comes from their, the Servo browser is being driven by them, and many other projects benefit from their contributions.

by LeFantome

12/31/2025 at 3:55:08 PM

Stardew is probably one of the most (if not the most) popular game ever made with MonoGame

AAA studios don't really use MonoGame.

by mpeg

12/31/2025 at 3:57:36 PM

Their point wasn't about MonoGame. Do AAA studios really not use any open source tools?

by willis936

12/31/2025 at 4:06:02 PM

They use a lot of open source libraries, yes, but I think it's about how much of the end product depends on the OSS tool/library. Studios using unreal engine probably don't use that much critical OSS directly – their licensed software probably does. And the software vendors / big studios do donate to tools they depend on, for instance Epic Games donated $1.2m to Blender

by mpeg

12/31/2025 at 4:14:39 PM

AAA usually goes with AAA-tools and frameworks. So Unity, Unreal Engine or even their own engine. OSS might be used, but for smaller parts or as tools for producing their stuff (like browser, editor, etc.). So while they sometimes donate, there is not much reason to give a big sum to a single project. They might be even donating more overall, but separated on multiple different projects.

by PurpleRamen

12/31/2025 at 3:58:46 PM

Many use Dear ImGui for example and some do donate afaik.

by NSUserDefaults

12/31/2025 at 6:43:41 PM

Another one would be Bastion - code is even open source [0].

---

[0]: https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog/bastions-open-source-br...

by wsc981

12/31/2025 at 10:18:46 PM

By sales it is the 17th most popular game accross all systems and all history. But I think Terraria beats it even on Mono

by ZiiS

12/31/2025 at 4:41:51 PM

Second would be Terraria (originally made for XNA).

by lostmsu

12/31/2025 at 5:25:11 PM

Stardew valley was also originally XNA

by oceansky

12/31/2025 at 4:15:12 PM

> but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios

Epic has a grant program that has given out thousands of grants, including over a million dollars to the Blender project

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants

by Aurornis

12/31/2025 at 3:58:32 PM

Definitely indie. It was a solo project until launch.

by fourneau

12/31/2025 at 4:13:28 PM

It's an epic story. Grinding on a solo project for 4 years is pretty daunting, I'm glad the universe rewarded him.

by CuriouslyC

12/31/2025 at 4:37:20 PM

Because no middle managers will get promoted for doing this. All large corporate structures are the same: What's the incentive for the mini warlords to expand their mini empire? Nothing else is worth doing (to them).

by didip

12/31/2025 at 7:07:00 PM

AAAs use their own engines, or increasingly Unreal Engine, though. They usually prefer to get a contract and a neck to wring as far as vendor tools go.

by jayd16

12/31/2025 at 4:44:06 PM

>I don't want to assume, but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios (spare Valve). This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame.

Despite all the talk from libertarians about how private donations are the solution to the world's ills, open source software very rarely gets substantial donations.

by firefax

12/31/2025 at 6:08:56 PM

Libertarians don't claim that they have "the solution to the world's ills". Just that the government is causing worse problems than it solves, and generally those problems can be handled by a free market.

We're already being taxed like crazy while that money subsidizes things almost everyone disagrees with. The libertarians believe that if people weren't taxed as much they could voluntarily spend money on things that are valuable to them. Some people would donate more and others wouldn't donate at all, and that's okay. I believe we would see a lot more voluntary donations without the burden of high taxes.

Claiming "libertarians haven't solved this yet" while continuing to take everyone's money is not a fair argument.

To stay on topic, this thread is about a private individual donating to a project he supports. That's something everyone should be happy about. And he did not do it as a political statement.

by Steve6

12/31/2025 at 9:29:03 PM

Historically, donations to charities drop when tax rates go down. As a percentage of income, donations were highest when tax rates were highest.

The best example that low tax rates don't increase giving: in 2017 the TCJA reduced tax rates for most people, and increased the standard deduction (but reduced the charitable deduction). Even though they were being taxed less and had more money to donate, Americans donated several billion less to charities each year (estimates very, but they're all between $15 and $20 billion less each year).

by gamblor956

1/1/2026 at 8:58:39 PM

I want you to know I took some time research and educate myself on these claims.

From my findings, I could not find anything directly correlating the 2017 TCJA to total donations. The TCJA did change how deductions are treated, and more people opted to go with standard deductions instead of itemized deductions, but this is not the same as total donations. It is possible this incentivized people to donate less because they couldn't get as much of a tax write off.

For total donations, it has continued to trend upward despite some fluctuations, and a $20 billion swing is not a large deviation. The numbers I saw were $400+ billion during that time. Again, this has many more factors than the TCJA.

Most importantly, I'd like to reiterate that libertarians do not claim that cutting government will "solve" problems like open source projects getting enough funding. Just that it will give the free market an opportunity to find a balance. No big bill is going to solve these problems either, it will only make it worse. The end does not justify the mean. Stop taking people's money, and let them spend it on the things they find valuable even if you disagree with it.

by Steve6

12/31/2025 at 4:29:39 PM

Its hard in a corporate structure to just 'donate.' The culture and system is not designed for it very well. This is why selling books or support works out better for foss projects.

Its hard to see SDV as some niche 'indie' project and more and more pedantic definitions of 'indie' aren't helpful. This is a game with an estimated half BILLION in sales. He's extremely wealthy and could have given 50x more easily. Its a bit arbitrary on who or who hasnt done enough. Why no metrics like 10% of your income if you use the tool? "Volunteerism" doesn't work and stuff like this seems like mostly PR and a tip, moreso that "let me help you run this project." I mean does this make monogame better? It seems like a tool that's not really used by any commercial devs. This just seems like a "thank you for helping me get super rich," kind of thing. A tip, which is different than funding a project, fundamentally. You can tip a dying business that is destined to fold shortly, for example. That's not the same as funding it.

This sort of "we are and aren't a business" gray-zone these foss projects live in needs reform, imho. Expecting the kindness of strangers doesn't work. Look at how many foss projects get little to no donations. I don't have the fix here but these developers should probably roll up a LLC and market some kind of service these companies can just easily write invoices for instead of just expecting a random middle-manager to fight the execs to write a $100k check to some guy named Phil in Minnesota that maintains something-something-lib, which is one tiny part of a larger ecosystem that maintains their backend.

by zoeysmithe

12/31/2025 at 3:55:06 PM

> This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame.

For the hundredth time. He's an extremely rare person focused on quality, value, and competency. And he clearly just loves his own game

Edit: Sorry? Pay for what, and risk what why? AAA studios simply cannot deliver good value in comparison. The donation is unrelated—or perhaps, arguably, open source makes this productivity possible.

by MangoToupe

12/31/2025 at 4:00:30 PM

Beyond love, what you prefer ? Pay 100K USD, or put at risk your 500M USD project ?

Edit: if the engine is not maintained, there can be compatibility issues, it can go abandoned and lack new features, etc. It's the technical pillar of the product, like Unity.

by rvnx

12/31/2025 at 4:15:36 PM

Is it so hard to accept someone else might give away money for a charitable reason rather than because of fear?

by vasco

12/31/2025 at 4:59:58 PM

When you give money to help a pet shelter, or to feed kids in some far-away location, this is a donation. You give something, and you don't get anything back in return. Even a tax benefit, it doesn't change anything (as at the end you have to pay the same amount of money).

But now, what if you "donate" to a public park across the street from your house: Is it charity? Yes, you are giving money to the city/trust that you don't have to give. Do you benefit? Yes directly, your property value goes up and you have a nice place to walk. Does that make it "not a donation"? No. It just makes it a smart donation or even sponsoring a project.

In all cases he is securing his own supply chain, and for a very cheap price. It is a very rational business expense.

by rvnx

12/31/2025 at 5:05:04 PM

I really hate that vision of the world with a passion. For people with such opinion nothing is ever enough or pure enough, but if you ask directly such people donate almost nothing themselves.

The fact people with this opinion exist also discourages donations from others because "nothing is ever enough" for you.

Also pro-tip, if you do more than a handful donations you'll realize that you as the giver is always the one that most benefits from being charitable. The feeling you get is why you do it.

by vasco

12/31/2025 at 5:08:57 PM

> The fact people with this opinion exist also discourages donations from others because "nothing is ever enough" for you.

(this sounds like an attack btw, as you can't know what I do)

"Sponsoring", "Supporting", "Paying", "Hiring", "Contracting", etc, this is all ok.

but calling it charitable donation is a bit too much; calling "donation" money that you give that directly benefits your own interest is something I don't feel is right. It's only about the wording, not the action.

"I made a video game and now I chose to give 500 USD to help women who need shelter because they are beaten by their husbands", or even 50 USD, or 5 USD.

then yes, this is charity, and beautiful.

But this is very different to "I sent 100K USD to the project I absolutely and critically depend on".

It's not about the amount or doing "more", or that people are never satisfied, is that if you give to people who work in your interest, it's strategic sponsorship (or contractors...).

It's two very very different things, under the same word: "donation".

by rvnx

12/31/2025 at 5:42:31 PM

[flagged]

by vasco

12/31/2025 at 8:51:07 PM

Or it could be both. Time will tell.

ConcernedApe's next game is also built on MonoGame, so he has self-interested reasons to want MonoGame to continue to be maintained. But just because ConcernedApe has self-interested reasons to donate doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't also come from a charitable place.

MonoGame is basically getting a sponsor. The ecosystem benefits. I'm personally happy to leave it there rather than asking for moral purity.

by munchbunny

1/1/2026 at 12:19:09 AM

You seem like a bitter person. I hope you find love.

by MangoToupe

12/31/2025 at 4:34:29 PM

I mean, this indie developer sold more than lots of (most?) AAA studios, and AAA studios have a lot more operating costs than an indie. Donating one dev year is a lot easier when you sell 50 million copies and hire no one than when you sell a couple million copies and have 100 employees plus investors. (I have 3000 hours on this game, so definitely not biased against indies or something.)

by oefrha

12/31/2025 at 5:17:35 PM

These studios have profit margins in the multi-millions, they could afford a symbolic $100k donation. Instead they choose to push their developers through another crunch cycle.

by Zetaphor

12/31/2025 at 5:25:28 PM

They typically pay a lot more than $100k for Unreal and the likes or employees working on their in house engines.

Oh and these studios often lose money instead of having profit margins in the multi-million, see Ubisoft.

by oefrha

12/31/2025 at 5:23:08 PM

But ConcernedApe uses Monogame for Stardew Valley, the studios don't use Monogame. Why would they donate?

by tapoxi

12/31/2025 at 5:17:52 PM

Stardew Valley is one of a few indie games that seems to be known outside the usual “gaming” circle. I have a few friends who’ve never engaged with any games but absolutely loved Stardew Valley. It’s the pinnacle of cozy, I suppose.

ConcernedApe has done something special with game development to achieve that. I always look to him as an example as I take to game dev as a hobby. This is yet another way I want to take after him for sure. Looking forward to Haunted Chocolatier!

Also I’d never heard of MonoGame somehow, def going to take a peek now!

by yakattak

12/31/2025 at 5:51:03 PM

I love Stardew and played a bunch when it was first released.

He really had perfect timing with its release. The original developers and the rights holders for harvest moon had so badly fumbled for so long with bad releases or only in Japan releases etc. Someone was bound to show up in that space since there was a clear demand for that type of game. It also helps that he aped (heh) harvest moon from the super nintendo / game boy generation so it basically runs on a potato and no one needs to buy dedicated hardware.

by tempest_

12/31/2025 at 8:10:48 PM

Definitely a perfect timing situation, though with substantial risk. Considering the time the game was in development, an alternative could have showed up in the market.

However, I believe Stardew Valley’s appeal wasn’t simply of fulfilling a void in the market. It is great because there is genuine passion for the subject in the execution, and the content in the game is truly compelling for a wide audience. An amazing story.

by Mobius01

12/31/2025 at 6:47:19 PM

“Harvest Moon but for every platform ever created” was such an obvious need it was surprising it took that long to arrive.

Just like it’s somewhat amazing to realize it took until 2009 for “digital Lego” to catch on with Minecraft.

by bombcar

12/31/2025 at 4:22:16 PM

A true Christmas story! Somewhat unrelated, could someone provide insight into the following -

"MonoGame is a "bring your own tools" kind of framework, which means that it provides the building blocks to build your own engine and tools, but it isn't quite an engine itself.

If you are expecting a scene editor (like Unity or Unreal), MonoGame is not that.

If you love coding and understanding how things work under the hood, MonoGame might be what you are looking for. And fear not, getting a game running with MonoGame only takes a few minutes."

by barrenko

12/31/2025 at 4:39:16 PM

Yes, this is basically correct. When you start writing a game with MonoGame, all you get is basically a class with two methods, Update() and Draw() that MonoGame will be calling in a loop, plus a bunch of libraries for input, graphics, audio, content loading etc. you can use in your code. It's a step beyond something like bare raylib or SDL2, but it's a far cry from Unreal, which lets you think in terms of game entities from the very start: "here's the map, here's where the player will spawn, here, add some buildings and you can run around them".

With MonoGame/XNA/FNA, LOVE2D, libGDX, HaxeFlixel you are getting a bunch of tools instead, which is probably not bad if you like coding and your game doesn't fit into one of existing popular genres.

by orthoxerox

12/31/2025 at 5:13:08 PM

I think a lot comes down to whether a game is art-first or code-first, and almost all modern games are art-first, so it makes sense to have your platform be one that artists and designers are immediately productive in, and the software people are basically writing behaviour modules and plugins for that established system.

But it's good that code-first engines still exist. There are always going to be projects that are more experimental, or don't have a clear pattern of entities, or are dynamic enough that that kind of thing doesn't make sense.

by mikepurvis

12/31/2025 at 6:05:35 PM

This is a somewhat naive view of engines in modern game development. Full-featured engines allow every department to dive in head first in parallel. The first gameplay elements often get programmed before the first pieces of content arrive. Scenes can be blocked out and drafted immwdiately at the start of the project. Complex animations with states and blend trees can be created amd tested independently of the gameplay code. Audio scenes, complex cues and (dynamic) music can be mixed and mastered independently of any code to integrate audio into the game. The whole process is highly parallelized these days and the engine tools serve to insulate the departments from one another to some extent so that everybody can move faster.

by gmueckl

12/31/2025 at 7:09:22 PM

Right, yes. I think all I meant is that in earlier generations you could do modeling/sprites and concepting from the beginning, but there was a hard line in terms of how much code had to exist before the whole thing started to look or feel like much.

Thinking here especially of the Doom / Quake / HL1 era where they were basically building the level design tools in parallel with the game.

Whereas nowadays you can have movement, mobs, dialog flow, etc all with very little code, and it's placeholders like "oh we need a custom shader for this effect" or "that boss needs some custom logic".

by mikepurvis

12/31/2025 at 7:42:34 PM

You don't have to reinvent all these systems, but in my experience, you still have to code a lot to wire these very generic building blocks up in a good way that fits your specific use cases.

by gmueckl

12/31/2025 at 5:41:02 PM

As someone who has been solo developing an app for months concerned ape is such an inspiration. He literally spent 5 years on stardew valley with zero income. It's such a beautiful game and reminds me what you can do when you follow what feels right.

by mips_avatar

12/31/2025 at 7:08:46 PM

The book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels has a good chapter on the development of Stardew.

Honestly though it only reads as inspirational with the success coming at the end. 9 times out of 10 that story is actually how someone "wasted" 5 years of his life, ruined his relationship with his girlfriend that was basically supporting him the whole time, and had difficulty getting a normal job after.

by tick_tock_tick

12/31/2025 at 5:45:50 PM

The sad truth js that for every solo devs that becomes successful, there are an untold number of solo devs that don't find an audience and fail. The reality is pretty brutal in games.

by gmueckl

12/31/2025 at 5:50:27 PM

Yeah but how often do you finish a AAA game and want to cry at how beautiful it is. You get that feeling pretty often with an indie game. Like something really important is being done by indie devs.

by mips_avatar

12/31/2025 at 6:31:56 PM

> You get that feeling pretty often with an indie game.

Poppycock. What, you wanna cry at how beautiful *checks notes* Hatred is? What about Unity Asset Swap Shovelware #375438? And for those who fall on the 'violence' side in the 'violence' vs 'sex' debate, how about we take a gander at the corruption genre?

Sure, there are some amazing indie games (think of Unrest, for example), but there's also a ton of low effort garbage, and far too many projects which suffer from a lack of time, lack of resources, lack of ambition, or, sadly, lack of care. And, of course, the occasional 'I can't believe anyone at any point during the project thought this was a good idea'.

by tmtvl

12/31/2025 at 10:34:52 PM

> You get that feeling pretty often with an indie game.

I've never had that feeling about any game. Indie games tend to be higher quality (because they are made by people who prioritize the game above business), but I think you're strongly overstating how good they are.

by bigstrat2003

12/31/2025 at 11:54:52 PM

The last game I felt that strongly about at the ending was Red Dead Redemption 2. I don't think I can recall the last indie game I felt strongly about.

Indie games are important and deserve more attention. Let's not glorify them too much though. They can be shit, just like AAA games; they can also be great, just like AAA games.

by squigz

12/31/2025 at 7:02:04 PM

If you only count developers who finish a quality game, polished, with completed endgame, and free of major bugs then the numbers are far lower.

Maybe it's more of a lesson in how hard it is to finish a game, than how hard it is to make a somewhat successful one.

by zulban

12/31/2025 at 7:39:50 PM

Games are hard. I wanted to focus more on the fact that there is a perceived glamour to indie development that is totally amd utterly disconneted from their reality.

by gmueckl

12/31/2025 at 9:34:58 PM

IIRC he has a supportive partner that took care of being the breadwinner during that development period though.

by eswat

12/31/2025 at 9:41:11 PM

Makes it almost more impressive, both the faith and trust between them. Wholesome all around, reflected in a video game :)

by embedding-shape

12/31/2025 at 4:56:28 PM

This reminds me of Relogic (Terraria) donating 100k to Godot and FNA after the whole Unity pricing change debacle a couple (few?) years back.

Really glad to see mega successful devs giving back to the tools that they use.

by drakythe

12/31/2025 at 7:01:23 PM

Also Mega Crit, devs of Slay the Spire, which are making the second one in Godot. They’re one of the largest sponsors to the project now.

by sph

12/31/2025 at 4:36:22 PM

When ever I hear and see Mono Game I think back at the time I decided to dig a bit into XNA. I was a huge Xbox 360 fan and liked the idea of the indie platform they tried to setup. At the time the decision moving from Flash was either XNA in c# or Unity. Back then Unity used JS as a scripting engine. I wanted nothing to do with that. I also thought that MS is a saver bet. Well XNA is dead but the legacy lives on in parts in MonoGame. Unity well, would have been a better choice. But in end I had to work with Unity anyways be it not as a game developer implementing game logic.

by larusso

12/31/2025 at 5:04:35 PM

As many, I got into programming as young boy thank to video games.

I remember one year, someone bought me an old book on game development. It was a book using DirectX 3.0. To this day, that was probably the most intimidating programming books I’ve ever read. I remember hearing about XNA at the time and it just made so much more sense to me.

I’ve tried a few times to get back into game development, but I don’t like most big engines. The opinionation of them doesn’t square with how my non-game dev mind wants to model things, and I’m too retarded for the math/physics involved in rolling your own engine.

I did briefly toy with monogame though during a period where I was unemployed. It certainly had me the most comfortable as someone who’s career prior had been enterprise .Net crap.

At this point though, game dev seems extremely tedious. I have much more interest in game design. I’ve considered picking up genetic coding just to try it out for that purpose.

by pepperball

12/31/2025 at 3:53:28 PM

How much money does he have in order to make such a big donation? Has stardew valley made that much?

by selfawareMammal

12/31/2025 at 3:59:05 PM

Stardew Valley is in the top 5 selling indie games of all time, with 50 million units sold. It's owned and run entirely by one person (the donor in OP's link) - he ended his relationship with a (small) games publisher a few years ago, and runs everything himself.

by jasongill

12/31/2025 at 4:29:29 PM

Additionally there is a concert series that's quite good and other merchandise.

by big_toast

12/31/2025 at 5:52:21 PM

My girlfriend owns the board game, she enjoys it!

by tempest_

12/31/2025 at 4:44:04 PM

Does this mean he does the mobile games himself now? I remember he had outsourced those for a while.

by throwaway638637

12/31/2025 at 4:56:28 PM

Think of it this way; he subcontracts, but he deals with the subcontractors himself.

by philistine

12/31/2025 at 3:56:24 PM

“In Feb. 2024, Stardew Valley reached 30 million copies sold, and if we assume each copy sold for $15, that means that the game could have generated a revenue of $450 million. A modest 10 percent profit margin puts ConcernedApe’s earnings at $45 million, a number that is likely to increase in the future.” Source: https://dotesports.com/stardew-valley/news/how-much-money-di...

by doug_life

12/31/2025 at 4:03:43 PM

TBH the profit margin on this game is probably closer to 100% than 10%, it was a solo-dev game so never much overhead, I think one guy was hired to work on it.

by benoau

12/31/2025 at 4:18:38 PM

30% off the top for most stores (Valve/Steam, Apple/iPhone, Google/Android, etc), then around 50% taxes between state, local... some fixed expenses and overhead. It's probably well under 20% in the bank after all is said and done. That said, it's still a lot of money.

by tracker1

12/31/2025 at 5:13:41 PM

God, that's awful. That 30% cut for the middle man hurts. At least the government tax can be put to good use (emphasis on can...)

by yunnpp

12/31/2025 at 5:55:01 PM

Stardew likely qualifies for the reduced store cuts. Steam _lowers_ the percentage for a game when it sells high. Still somewhere between 10 and 25%, though.

Generally, the Steam cut is considered “fair” for Indy devs. The benefits of steam (discoverability, massive audience) generate more sales. My Indy dev friends are not upset about the steam cut at all.

This, however, is one area where eventually Epic Games shines — they take a much lower cut and if they increase in popularity with gamers then steam might be forced to lower their share.

by LaffertyDev

12/31/2025 at 10:22:11 PM

> Still somewhere between 10 and 25%, though.

This is basically almost public information: 25% cut on earnings between $10 million and $50 million.

Yet most likely very big share of sales is well below $10 let alone $15 due to sales and regional pricing.

So yeah I doubt numbers anywhere close to those adverised.

> Generally, the Steam cut is considered “fair” for Indy devs. The benefits of steam (discoverability, massive audience) generate more sales. My Indy dev friends are not upset about the steam cut at all.

Steam no longer provide any discoverability on its own unless you either bring your own community ftom outside or spend $10,000-100,000 on marketing to gain wishlists.

If you're small 2-10 people indie gamedev studio and have external funding Valve will earn more from your game than you.

by SXX

12/31/2025 at 6:00:25 PM

In this case, as a solo dev, it's probably quite justified to be honest. I doubt ConcernedApe would have really been able to continue solo-ing it with this level of success if he also had to maintain distribution channels, sales/returns, marketing, legal stuff on a global scale.

It's probably the big name studios who already have entire departments to do that kind of stuff that feel they're being ripped off.

by MajorBee

1/1/2026 at 12:58:46 AM

Actually the more you earn the worse the deal is - he's probably paid about $100 million for what amounts to $100,000s of labor if he paid people to take care of this stuff, and some (low) millions in taxes collected for various jurisdictions. Dude's personally bought Gabe a ship in exchange for some accounting.

by benoau

12/31/2025 at 5:54:31 PM

Gabe gotta buy a $500 million dollar yacht.

It pays to be the middle man!

by tempest_

12/31/2025 at 6:15:26 PM

The yacht and the company that makes it. Plus like 10 other ships. His fleet probably employs more people than Steam lmao.

by benoau

12/31/2025 at 6:51:06 PM

And the DJ, I suppose. Somebody's gonna have to keep that rave going.

by yunnpp

12/31/2025 at 7:11:37 PM

I mean the company taking the 30% cut also pays taxes on that so more then you'd guess are going to taxes.

by tick_tock_tick

12/31/2025 at 6:41:07 PM

> around 50% taxes between state, local.

Truly? I believe he lives in Washington State. It's really HALF of his income?

by mostlysimilar

12/31/2025 at 7:16:24 PM

Washington state does not have a state income tax, FYI.

by techgnosis

12/31/2025 at 9:42:15 PM

The highest marginal combined tax rate in the U.S. is 51.8% (37+10.9+3.9, assuming an NYC address).

However, this is business income, not compensation, so it's taxed on a net basis, not a gross basis (even though it may still be included on his personal income tax return). This means his taxable income is the amount left after taking into account the retailer's fees, subcontractor costs, etc.

So, for example, if he made $100 selling games, $30 would go to the store. Assuming no expenses and overhead (since we have no data to come up with those numbers), the remaining $70 would be subject to tax. Assuming he lived in NYC, he would pay up to $36.26 in combined taxes (not taking into account the SALT deduction or the progressive tax rate calculation), for a post-tax net of at least $33.74. Assuming he lived in WA as other commenters note, he would pay up to $25.9 in federal taxes, for a post-tax net of no less than $44.1. (But note: Washington has an excise tax on businesses which is based on gross income...)

by gamblor956

12/31/2025 at 4:11:49 PM

Valve's 30% cut would lower it substantially. Taxes might put it beneath 50%.

by kevinh

12/31/2025 at 4:18:55 PM

The game has also been on sale numerous times for less than $15. It is currently available on Steam for $9

by 3eb7988a1663

12/31/2025 at 4:08:38 PM

He also put an insane amount of effort, far more than most of us mortals.

by kiba

12/31/2025 at 5:13:27 PM

See: Blood, Sweat and Pixels; Chapter 2

https://a.co/d/4OIUtsN

by cheschire

12/31/2025 at 6:45:13 PM

Came here to recommend this book. It is fantastic. There are nine other games covered besides Stardew Valley. Some are great, some not so great, but the stories behind each one are excellent.

by MegaDeKay

12/31/2025 at 4:12:03 PM

All the game markets take huge cuts. Steam is 30% if I recall correctly.

by ehnto

12/31/2025 at 4:56:19 PM

Damn I didn’t realize. 30% is pretty hefty

by chamomeal

12/31/2025 at 5:03:28 PM

The service Steam provides to game developers is substantial.

by margalabargala

12/31/2025 at 5:48:36 PM

Not really, what they actually do for most games is basically what Google and Apple do: a token review, then nothing apart from some niceties for players. Then they pocket an immense profit, it came out in one of Epic's cases that Valve net $50 million/year profit per employee.

The only thing for developers they still do better than Google and Apple really is a few promotions throughout the year that target specific genres for released games developers can register for (whereas Google and Apple select the games they promote), and the "Next Fest" 3x a year for unreleased games.

They used to do stuff like "visibility rounds" that would reach 100,000s of people who didn't know about your game - the same feature today targets people who already wishlisted your game, so these days most developers have to put significant effort and money into promoting their Steam page on other channels like tiktok/youtube/reddit.

by benoau

12/31/2025 at 7:38:01 PM

Well, plus there's the whole version management and packaging and hosting and distributing giant amounts of data.

If you are an indie team that makes a 50GB game and has 50k players, distributing and update management would be a gargantuan task without Steam or something like it. 2.5 petabytes of bandwidth isn't cheap.

Yes what they do is profitable, I'm not saying that it isn't. But paying for what they do is (clearly) still more attractive to developers than rolling their own infrastructure to do the same.

by margalabargala

12/31/2025 at 8:30:24 PM

What Steam brings is a firehose of gamers with their credit cards ready to all the games they think will be successful.

There's a reason why everyone launches on Steam.

by skibidithink

12/31/2025 at 9:36:50 PM

That firehose isn't pointed at everyone, being the newest game on Steam has a very fleeting value and then it's on you to find customers. It used to be that Steam played a much more active role in spreading traffic around games but these days the median game is doing $1,000 - $2,000 in sales which is like 100 - 200 copies sold. It's more and more like Google and Apple where what you get out of it is just a function of how much you spend on customer acquisition, how well you reach social media, and whether you can leverage these to become popular enough to achieve prominence.

Everyone launches on Steam because they are an utterly-entrenched monopoly, all other PC game distribution channels are collectively a very small percent.

by benoau

1/1/2026 at 2:22:39 PM

The firehose only ever pointed at "everyone" back when Valve was hand-picking every game that got released on Steam. Back then we only saw a few games released every week, and because of that they got that much more attention. But that also meant that most games never got any attention on Steam, since they were never released there.

However, Valve has since removed most barriers to entry and these days Steam sees more than 350 releases every week (nearly 20k in 2025), a number that is constantly growing. Add to the fact that there are already more than 130,000 games on Steam, that every new release has to compete with, and it is no wonder that median sales are low:

The low barrier to entry means that a lot of crappy games being released on Steam, that were never going to sell a lot, and the actually good games have to compete with all the other good games on the platform, that are probably also being sold at a much greater discount than your newly released title

by optionalsquid

12/31/2025 at 10:28:10 PM

Right, all the games that they think will be successful. Most games won't- it's a power law market.

There's nothing preventing a game dev from selling exclusively on their own site. It's not as though Steam has exclusive access to Windows customers like the App/Play Store do on their platforms. Steam earns its customers and their trust and developers follow.

by skibidithink

12/31/2025 at 4:13:19 PM

Well he made a 10% deal with a publisher iirc and steam gets 30% - so that's a chunk right there

by jasonjmcghee

12/31/2025 at 4:12:25 PM

Steam takes 30%, other stores take 10-20%

by foxrider

12/31/2025 at 4:15:47 PM

Presumably he spent years working on it. His own time should be subtracted from the revenue too.

by geon

12/31/2025 at 4:18:17 PM

Hundreds of millions minus hundreds of thousands of dollars lol.

by benoau

12/31/2025 at 4:29:35 PM

And the decision to risk years of his life spent on a project that might not pan out. IIRC he was largely supported by his girlfriend during development and he worked in a cinema. That's in contrast to a job at a studio where you get a salary for your time whether it succeeds or not.

by keyringlight

12/31/2025 at 4:07:02 PM

Why would 1 unit of this game have a "profit margin" of 10%? It's a video game. He's not selling canned goods.

by pwdisswordfishy

12/31/2025 at 4:16:50 PM

Of the purchase price that the end-user pays, the retailer has to pay tax. That knocks off a variable percentage. It would be 20% in the UK.

There's also the cost of selling through Steam / Google Play / Whatever - typically 30%.

I assume the developer has some professional expenses - an accountant at a minimum, probably a lawyer, certainly insurance. Maybe they also have a PR team, advertising, and the like. I don't know whether they pay for testers, translators, and things like that.

Then we get on to things like buying a new development machine, going to tech conferences, taking an educational course, backups, and all the other things that a business needs to spend on in order to be effective.

Maybe a profit margin of 10% is unrealistically low - but developing software has legitimate costs. The margin is never going to be 100%.

by edent

12/31/2025 at 5:01:09 PM

What do you think the profit margin of canned goods is? They make cents on every can. Something like 2-3%.

The video games industry is filled to the brim with gatekeepers who take their cuts. Valve takes 30%, just for their store. Publishers start at 10%. Your engine might take a cut.

Estimating that Stardew Valley, the big success video game with the lowest overhead bar none, has made 10% profit might be too low. 20%? Might be high.

by philistine

12/31/2025 at 5:19:00 PM

> What do you think the profit margin of canned goods is?

For whom? The manufacture? It's closer to 10-30% for the manufacture (lower for white label goods, higher for "premium" brands). And it's higher for products that enjoy monopoly status.

For retailers, it's 2-3%, but retailers also get products on loan and negotiate various agreements that help cover the costs of displays, shipping, marketing, and wastage. So even that small percentage margin is skewed a bit.

There's a reason that retailers and food manufactures ("canned goods") were some of the largest American companies prior to technology taking off. It's a highly profitable industry.

by mywittyname

12/31/2025 at 5:27:01 PM

He used this open source engine, it is free. He is almost certainly getting between 60-70% of revenue after distribution fees. His only other expenses are taxes and the other devs he employs and he was solo until the game made like $100 million. Most of the copies sold for $15 so it seems fair to me to say his companies lifetime revenue is close to $10*number of units sold which is close to half a billion dollars. And since the companies expenses are effectively zero profit is the same. If he’s smart with taxes he’s paid 15% corporate tax rate then 15% capital gains rate which comes out to just under 28% so his own lifetime earnings is probably around $360 million.

by HDThoreaun

12/31/2025 at 4:38:14 PM

Besides tax and the store's cut, the games also regularly sales and prices-changes. So you can't just extrapolate the price today with the amount of units sold and assume this to be the revenue.

by PurpleRamen

12/31/2025 at 10:29:22 PM

There are regional pricing and sales. Good chunk of those 30 millions sold way below US price. He certainly earned what you say though.

by SXX

12/31/2025 at 3:55:49 PM

https://steam-revenue-calculator.com/app/413150/stardew-vall...

by bhaney

12/31/2025 at 4:55:19 PM

69 million dollars in refunds!? That's 12% of the gross, seems crazy high. Is this pulling from actual Steam numbers?

by MrZander

12/31/2025 at 10:34:50 PM

Amount of refunds is usually pretty high for all less popular games. A lot of people tend to use refunds as demo.

I doubt its that high for Stardew Valley though. Simply because popular games are sold via network effect and people ususlly know what they buying.

by SXX

12/31/2025 at 5:16:34 PM

This doesn't seem high to me at all. You buy the game, try it for an hour, feel kind of meh on it or even just see a different game you think you'd like even more, and hit the refund button. If anything, I'm surprised it's only ~12%.

by Wowfunhappy

12/31/2025 at 3:56:32 PM

This should really put any AAA studio to shame. A single developer sold half a billion dollars on Steam alone.

by giancarlostoro

12/31/2025 at 7:20:06 PM

Stardew Valley is a very noteworthy achievement, but it’s not the kind of success anyone should expect to simply replicate.

Go for it, but most will not achieve a similar outcome.

by nkrisc

12/31/2025 at 9:40:13 PM

You miss all the shots you never take. The Stardew developer took a shot. Notch took many shots.

by giancarlostoro

1/1/2026 at 5:31:13 AM

The Stardew guy spent five years not working, living off of the labor of his girlfriend.

Sure, take your shot, but it is unreasonable to think that many people have the opportunity to drop everything for a five year vision quest, hoping to come out the other side a financial success.

by 3eb7988a1663

12/31/2025 at 9:45:51 PM

That’s true, but most people will still miss all those kinds of shots.

If you can take the chance and want to, do it. I just recommend having a backup plan.

by nkrisc

12/31/2025 at 4:10:09 PM

A winning lottery ticket would have an even better return on investment. Good luck with that business strategy.

(To be clear, Stardew Valley is a great game. But "making a breakout indie game" really does feel akin to winning the lottery to me, even if the game is fundamentally great.)

by Wowfunhappy

12/31/2025 at 4:16:08 PM

Your chances are much more higher building your own game than playing the lottery endlessly. You forget that guy who made Stardew Valley had to self-teach everything he knew, till he got to the point he quit his full time job. I don't see in what universe you have a better chance to win the lottery, than to build a successful indie game if you truly put your heart into it. Some of the greatest inventions didn't come to us because someone won the lottery, they experimented and kept going. Look at Duck Duck Go, he had 30 other projects that 'failed' before Duck Duck Go succeeded.

by giancarlostoro

12/31/2025 at 4:39:52 PM

The lottery definitely has worse odds, I just don't think that's saying much.

If you want to create indie games—and you can make it work without quitting your day job—go for it! But I don't think it would be smart for EA or Ubisoft to, like, stop making big-budget games and make indie games instead. If you can make a breakout hit, you can make a huge profit—but you have to make a breakout hit, and that comes down to a lot of luck.

---

Now, I do think it would make sense for EA/Ubisoft to try more mid-budget releases, which explore something new instead of continuing a 10+ year franchise. A lot of them will fail, but if a few are extremely successful, they could make up for the failures. It kind of felt like the publishers were doing this for a while (Grow Home, Little Nightmares) but my sense is that it has kind of stopped? Although caveat, I also haven't been following gaming as closely as I once did.

by Wowfunhappy

12/31/2025 at 5:20:50 PM

> A lot of them will fail, but if a few are extremely successful, they could make up for the failures. It kind of felt like the studios were doing this for a while (Grow Home, Little Nightmares) but my sense is that it has kind of stopped?

I think the problem comes from marketing budgets. For any given game a marketing budget can push some amount of sales, but applying a marketing budget to each game makes it much harder for the winners to make up losses on the rest.

Small releases also need to be 'lean' releases; management overhead is another cost that's hard to make up in scale.

Combined, large developers don't have any natural advantage at making small to mid-scale games, and their structures impose fixed costs that are hard to avoid. It would almost be better for large developers to get indie-scale games by funding partners who act outside of the corporate structure, but anybody can do that.

Hearthstone (Blizzard) is another rare exception of an indie-scale, in-house game that was a breakout hit that could not have come from the outside (because of the IP involved), but even that existed because it started as a "closet-scale" project with senior developers who insulated themselves from management pressures.

by Majromax

12/31/2025 at 5:36:31 PM

That's interesting, I think you're probably right.

> Combined, large developers don't have any natural advantage at making small to mid-scale games, and their structures impose fixed costs that are hard to avoid. It would almost be better for large developers to get indie-scale games by funding partners who act outside of the corporate structure, but anybody can do that.

The advantage would be funding. I love indie games but I do get tired of 2D pixel art. With just a bit more money—still an order of magnitude less than Call of Duty, mind you—the possibilities really expand.

I started playing Psychonauts 2 this week, and I think it's such an incredible game—and a great example of what can happen when an "indie" developer manages to secure a real budget. (I don't know if Double Fine is indie, but their games contain the sort of outside-the-box thinking I associate with indies.)

Perhaps some sort of YCombinator-esque model could actually work here.

by Wowfunhappy

12/31/2025 at 5:06:15 PM

> The lottery definitely has worse odds, I just don't think that's saying much.

Absolutely. People tend to assume that 95% of video games turn a profit, when it's the reverse. There are highly polished, incredibly high quality video games who simply just don't sell.

by philistine

1/1/2026 at 7:57:25 AM

Can you name some as an example? Genuinely curious.

by giancarlostoro

12/31/2025 at 3:58:59 PM

Why would it put them to shame? It’s an incredibly rare situation and most AAA devs would be super happy for him.

by MattRix

12/31/2025 at 4:02:44 PM

Is it incredibly rare? We've seen time and time again in the last few years, really basic indie games overtake AAA games in sales on Steam. Schedule One is another one which had 450 thousand concurrent players not very long after its launch. It seems AAA game studios are missing what gamers want at every turn. There's an uptick in indie devs that have broken through the barriers with good gameplay despite the graphics not being AAA quality.

Edit other games that come to mind: Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hades II, Schedule 1, and R.E.P.O.

More obvious examples: Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio were all indie studios as far as I am aware. Minecraft being one of the most successful games at 350 million copies sold.

by giancarlostoro

12/31/2025 at 4:07:43 PM

Those games are a grain of sand in the infinite desert that is the indie game world. The vast majority of indie games on Steam are barely even noticed by anyone.

by snowram

12/31/2025 at 4:10:08 PM

Schedule One sold more copies than a brand new Assassins Creed game at launch on Steam, Minecraft has sold more copies than most AAA games, including GTA 5.

by giancarlostoro

12/31/2025 at 4:22:31 PM

Minecraft has sold like 350 million copies which is more than second and third place combined IIRC if you look at the top best selling games

by Zekio

12/31/2025 at 4:23:56 PM

Yeah, sometimes I look back and think: Why didn’t they just choose to build a genre defining game? Next you’ll tell me that instead of just buying Bitcoin at $1k they chose to make yet another game.

by renewiltord

12/31/2025 at 5:07:54 PM

> Is it incredibly rare?

There are thousands of new games each year. The handful lucky outstanding low-budget games won't put anyone to shame.

> There's an uptick in indie devs that have broken through the barriers with good gameplay despite the graphics not being AAA quality.

Don't confuse indie with AAA. Indie is about control, AAA about budget. There is usually a correlation between control and budget, but there are also many long-running indie-devs with good budget now. Supergiant, who made Hades 2 for example, are such an AA(A)-Indie.

> Edit other games that come to mind: Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hades II, Schedule 1, and R.E.P.O. > More obvious examples: Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio were all indie studios as far as I am aware. Minecraft being one of the most successful games at 350 million copies sold.

Those are long-running, genre-defining games, which also received a good budget over the years. Many of them are in the realm of AA, probably AAA now. Those are naturally grown services-games which could grow from success to become even more successful. Big studies tried to emulate this in the last years, but ultimately failed big in most cases.

The general problem is, the bigger your budget, the bigger the anxiety, leading to more control, conservative micromanaging and throwing every shit into the game to cater as much people as possible, which in high numbers cannibalizes the market eventually. Low-budgets can take on more risks, focus on their gaming-mechanisms and don't have to sell big. Making small money to cover your costs is already good enough, and they all can always explode by luck if they get their marketing right.

Games like Schedule 1 or R.E.P.O. don't have to offer 100h+ of fancy fun and high level entertainment. People are happy if they can get their 10+ hours of fun out of it, because they didn't waste big money on it anyway. So you will always see cheap games occasionally explode for a short while, while everyone is waiting for the big games going on sale, especially when the cheap games are coming with a social aspect.

by PurpleRamen

12/31/2025 at 4:10:04 PM

> Is it incredibly rare?

Yes. It's incredibly rare. And suggesting otherwise is silly. Go ahead. Compare all the indie games released and see how often they succeed.

Sure, you can find successful ones, but you are ignoring those that do not succeed. There is a name for that, you know—survivorship bias.

by jasonlotito

12/31/2025 at 4:10:50 PM

I'm not claiming it's every indie game I'm saying its not quite as rare as you suggest, I look at new releases on Steam all the time, there's less indie games than you think being released. More than there probably should be, but its not like tens of thousands a day or week or even in a month. Its about 800 a month. That's rare if anything, not "incredibly rare"

by giancarlostoro

12/31/2025 at 4:24:18 PM

And out of the 800 new indie games a month, how many are breakout successes and sell even 10k copies? That's what is rare, not that indie games are rare, but having a success (like winning the lottery) is relatively rare.

At 10k new indie games a year, maybe a dozen gross over a million. A larger studio can't afford those kind of odds. That said, they should be able to make more games with a better focus on gameplay and a bit less on leading tech graphics.

by tracker1

12/31/2025 at 4:53:27 PM

This. And honestly, 10k sales is the bare minimum. Even if you’re a solo dev with no team and you handle everything yourself (programming, sound, music, art, marketing) to keep costs down, you’re still looking at around 6–12 months of work.

Most indie games don’t sell for more than $10 USD, but let’s be generous and say you manage to convince your audience to pay $20.

  Total: 200,000 USD
  After Steam Cut: 140,000 USD

And now you need to get lightning to strike every year to maintain your annual income so you can retire before you're Methuselah.

Could you work on the game part-time while holding down a full-time job? Sure, but you've got to have some iron stamina to want to sit in front of a computer for another 4 hours after a full day of work. Furthermore, not being able to focus on the game means dev might take significantly longer.

by vunderba

12/31/2025 at 6:24:52 PM

I was thinking 10K copies as a metric for even modest "success" for a game, but you're right about the expenses and income... That said, depending on where you live, that's a pretty good income.

by tracker1

12/31/2025 at 9:34:21 PM

In 2021, only the top 8 % of games sold 10k copies or more, so if you were among them, you were quite successful.

Source: https://app.sensortower.com/vgi/insights/article/video-game-...

In addition, a large fraction of those 8 % were probably games by AAA studios, so your chances as an indie dev are even lower.

by johndough

12/31/2025 at 4:43:19 PM

Indie games (which is just a tag you can add to your game) notwithstanding - the number of games released per month appears to be closer to double that.

https://steamdb.info/stats/releases

by vunderba

12/31/2025 at 4:59:54 PM

> It seems AAA game studios are missing what gamers want at every turn.

I’m really not sure what it is. Usually, when a company begins to abandon/shaft their user base like that, it’s because they found a more lucrative market to chase instead.

by pepperball

12/31/2025 at 3:59:29 PM

And over 8 million copies for the Switch.

by rachr

12/31/2025 at 3:55:45 PM

Half a billion USD (40M+ units sold), so 125K USD to have the core engine of your product be actively maintained by an expert for the price of +/- one developer is a very good deal

by rvnx

12/31/2025 at 3:57:42 PM

Stardew valley was apparently solo developed, and if Google is accurate it has sold over 40 million copies. Even if he sold it for a dollar, the dev would be very successful by most standards.

by clejack

12/31/2025 at 3:55:52 PM

It was a labor of love by a single developer. Assuming he never really hired that many more people, he can probably afford it.

by giancarlostoro

12/31/2025 at 3:54:13 PM

Solo developer who’s sold millions of it, yeah I think so

by cdelsolar

12/31/2025 at 8:39:55 PM

Nothing wrong with a self interested donation.

He donates, the engine remains a high quality tool, he doesn't have to write the whole stack himself.

Theirs a Flat Red Ball fork that can even build C# to Web. Hopefully these solutions can be shared with Godot so theit C# web export works.

by 999900000999

12/31/2025 at 5:45:45 PM

>MonoGame is free to use on all platforms from the public repository, but the code for supporting console platforms is only accessible to authorized console developers.

>These platforms are provided as private code repositories that add integrations with the console vendor's APIs and platform-specific documentation.

https://docs.monogame.net/articles/console_access.html

How can something be open source and closed at the same time? Is this basically MIT license? (Project page says Microsoft Public license)

by thrownawaysz

12/31/2025 at 5:52:27 PM

In the same page,

> The MonoGame Foundation cannot directly give anyone access to the private console repositories without prior approval from the vendor due to NDA requirements set out by each vendor.

Blame here goes to Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft (though I'm not so sure about Microsoft)

This also applies to Godot, another open source game engine, which doesn't have any code for console support on its upstream repository.

by kuylar

12/31/2025 at 6:00:30 PM

> though I'm not so sure about Microsoft

GDK is open-source (https://github.com/microsoft/gdk), but to be fair there is a possibility that there are some parts under NDA.

by zinekeller

12/31/2025 at 5:47:24 PM

It's a common business model - have an open source core, but have separate closed source extensions to support enterprise features.

by jmalicki

12/31/2025 at 5:50:05 PM

>It's a common business model

But no one is paying MonoGame in this case? Maybe I'm just thick but X developer pays for MS/Sony/Nintendo to become authorized > and then they ask permission to use MonoGame per the page.

1. Apply to the vendor developer program (required for publishing).

2. Through the program, request access to the MonoGame console repositories

MonoGame gets nothing in the end.

by thrownawaysz

12/31/2025 at 4:17:37 PM

Couldn't have seen this donation go to a more dedicated group of folks I have worked and interacted with in the past and love seeing these contributions back! :)

by chrisntr

12/31/2025 at 5:23:08 PM

Pretty cool, I think the industry benefits a lot with more game engines or frameworks at disposal.

by GabrielBRAA

12/31/2025 at 8:35:36 PM

As an aside, Monogame is a really great way to create video games.

by spicyusername

12/31/2025 at 5:52:48 PM

Indie devs doing this is pretty cool. I think the Sidekiq guy gave $250k/yr for years to Ruby.

by renewiltord

12/31/2025 at 5:38:21 PM

MonoGame has great logo.

by mirekrusin

12/31/2025 at 5:11:58 PM

I'm sorry but why C#? Isn't the big tech (Microsoft) in this case is a very big downside?

Why not LÖVE (Lua) for example? https://love2d.org/

There is also libGDX (Java) but not sure Oracle is any better than Microsoft. https://libgdx.com/

by unpopularopp

12/31/2025 at 7:52:06 PM

C# is very popular in game dev.

Unity, Godot, and the XNA successors (Monogame, FNA etc) all use it.

It's higher level and more productive for the average programmer than C++, but still has static typing and much more mature libraries than Lua and other dedicated game scripting languages (of which there used to be many).

A lot of game development is Windows centric, and many C++ game devs prefer Visual Studio (the full fat one, not VS Code). I'm guessing MS is seen more favourably in gaming circles than it is in web dev.

Windows and the Xbox are both tier 1 platform targets for game devs as well.

by seabrookmx

12/31/2025 at 7:57:00 PM

Because it was Microsoft that developed XNA a long time ago. It was XNA that inspired all the other frameworks you mentioned, and when Microsoft invariably abandoned it there were enough people using C# to make games to create demand for an open-source reimplementation.

by orthoxerox

12/31/2025 at 5:13:32 PM

Lua is awful for anything large. It is untyped, refactoring does not exist, etc. C# is an amazing language with amazing tools and very good libraries.

by rahkiin

12/31/2025 at 9:02:24 PM

C# has been favored by a lot of game devs for some time. You've got Godot, Unity, I think you can do -some- things in unreal engine with C#...

In contrast to java it has added a lot of helpful constructs for high performance code like game dev; things like `Span` and `Memory` plus ref structs make it easier to produce code that avoids allocation on the heap (and thus lower GC pauses, which are a concern for most types of game dev).

At least for now I'd rather trust Microsoft than Oracle, esp since both CoreCLR and Mono are under more permissive licenses than Java and have been for some time.

by to11mtm

12/31/2025 at 5:17:55 PM

C# is open source now and has been for a while. Same as .NET

Only proprietary bit is the debugger (vsdbg) but there are open alternatives.

by benbristow

12/31/2025 at 7:58:09 PM

> I'm sorry but why C#?

Because Stardew Valley is written in it. Probably half of modern games are written in C#, too (Unity). It's not exactly an odd choice.

> Isn't the big tech (Microsoft) in this case is a very big downside?

No, a language being backed by big tech is a plus as long as the stack is fully open-source (which .net now is).

> Why not LÖVE (Lua) for example?

Because Stardew Valley uses MonoGame, not LOVE.

> There is also libGDX (Java) but not sure Oracle is any better than Microsoft.

Other than Minecraft, can you name one successful game written in Java?

by tredre3

1/1/2026 at 11:13:51 AM

Others have mentioned big names, I’ll mention a medium ish name: Mindustry.

by klardotsh

1/1/2026 at 3:28:56 AM

Slay the Spire!

by whou

12/31/2025 at 10:42:33 PM

> Other than Minecraft, can you name one successful game written in Java?

The other major one would be RuneScape.

by bspammer

12/31/2025 at 5:12:45 PM

He should join the Open Source Pledge (disclaimer: I run it). The minimum is $2,000/dev so I'd say he qualifies haha

by whit537