It’s good that we have the concerned ape

[Mr Jt (Gog is king)]

Many triple a games are just here to steal your money with pointless micros. Indies are the future for pc gaming and it’s good that we have developers which are respecting customers and still add free content after all this years. No ai made games are the good way to go. Games made by living souls

[Sstavix]

If I recall correctly, CA has said that he has made enough money from Stardew Valley that he is set for life. Now he just does it for fun.

And that is the way it should be. Games are supposed to be fun, not soul-grinding tedium, whether playing them or creating them. A lot of developers need to keep that in mind.

[NBOX21]

He even posted this recently on his Twitter:
https://x.com/ConcernedApe/status/1815278461269000401
We need more developers like him in this industry.

[Mharr]

Originally posted by Sstavix:

whether playing them or creating them.

This most of all. The modern industry has destroyed too many eager young artists, and discarded their remains for not being profitable *enough*.

[ChrillBill]

Critical thinking is not for everyone. Many fans in particular often fail to see all the angles.

They only look at ConcernedApe's success and assumes that can happen for every solo dev out there as long as they think and act like ConcernedApe. There are so many more factors to take into account though, which you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand.

His oath is a nice one, and he is obviously not greedy. But pretending that it has nothing at all to do with his success seems a bit silly to me.

There actually already exist plenty of similar solo devs like CA out there, in terms of dedication, personality and creativity. I could name a handful of games that I think deserves so much more than what they have gotten in terms of sales. But that's the thing - you can't force people to buy and like something that they don't like or want. You can hope that your game will appeal to a lot of people, but you can never know beforehand that it will.

In that regard ConcernedApe got lucky - which is something many people don't seem to understand. And which is also why that sort of thing won't be happening and can't be happening all the time. Not even if you turn every single dev out there into a "ConcernedApe".

As for the other part of the discussion regarding dlc. Personally I am all for paid dlc as long as it is reasonable and does what you would expect dlc to do for a game. To each their own how they want to spend their money. But I agree it shouldn't automatically be associated with shame. It's not wrong wanting to earn more money, it's how the world works that we are living in. Most of us has to work in order to pay our bills and buy stuff that we want. So for me it comes down to the actual content, and the intention - where I feel some companies indeed are just trying to milk as much as possible from their customers by handing out.... Questionable content, to put it mildly.

Then there are other studios/companies who actually hand out good quality content and where you feel that you don't mind an additional cost. What both of these have in common is that they might both be struggling financially - and you can usually tell (at least in my opinion) who is straight up desperate and who is trying to provide good quality content while simultaneously also ensuring survival of their team.

Anyway, those are just my two cents regarding dlc. I don't think it's either black or white. There is plenty of gray here as well, like in so many other things.