Eric Barone Net Worth $100 Million

What is Eric Barone’s net worth?

Eric Barone, also known as ConcernedApe, has a net worth of $100 million. He is most famous for being the sole creator of Stardew Valley, an immensely popular farming video game.

Since launching in 2016, the game has sold over 13 million copies on PC and many millions more on other consoles.

One of his great secrets to financial success is that he built the entire game himself, which, once out in the world, was providing almost all its revenue directly as profit to him alone.

This is no small task, as he had to both learn and make all the programming, art, animation, sounds, music, and writing for the game.

Eric grew up in Seattle with a great love for video games, especially the Harvest Moon franchise, another farming simulator that was losing steam by the time he started work on Stardew Valley.

He went to school for computer science, graduating from the University of Washington Tacoma in 2011, and decided to start working on this little independent game in his spare time.

Near the end of the 4-year project, he wanted to devote all his time to it.

Obsessed, he lived off his savings and the support of his girlfriend, Amber, to finish the game while working part-time at a theatre.

What started as a 6-month resume-builder evolved into his life’s work.

His path was not easy, citing 12-hour days with a part-time job to help pay the bills.

His relationship with Amber was strained as he became more and more obsessed with the work, his sense of perfectionism forcing him to redraw characters up to 10 times before he was satisfied.

The cycle of learning slowed him down but made for a better game in the end.

He kept learning new skills for every aspect of the game, but he would have to redo vast swaths of the game world as he learned better ways to do each part.

He was improving his programming skills alongside learning art, from transferring line drawings to pixel art for each character.

His method was to build a small, player-focused model of the game world, first, just a blank area to walk around in, then into a small farm with all the tools, then grew it out into the town from there.

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Music

He also got to use his musical skills, built up from a young age by playing in bands.

He learned how to play different instruments and incorporated their sounds into different songs for the game, entirely made by himself.

Stardew Valley

Eric was also very averse to seeking help, not only having no direct outside help on the game but refusing even to ask questions online about how to do things.

Instead, he would only examine pre-existing posts and articles and try to use their information to solve his own problems.

Finally, after 4 and a half years of hard work, the game was released in 2016 with glowing reviews.

Since its launch, it has only grown in popularity and critical success.

Haunted Chocolatier

In October 2021, Eric announced a new game titled “Haunted Chocolatier.”

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Net Worth 2024

By the end of 2016, Stardew Valley had sold 2 million copies on PC, providing Barone with approximately $25 million in profit (the price is currently $14.99 on Steam). As the sole creator of the game, he took home most of the profits. Therefore, Eric Barone has an estimated net worth of $100 million.

This has made him one of the most spectacularly wealthy indie game creators, dwarfed only by the likes of Minecraft’s creator, Notch.

At the time of writing, Stardew Valley had sold over 20 million copies across all platforms (13 million on PC). “I can’t believe the game has reached this level,” he said.

Although Barone hired a team to work with him on the updates, most of the profits were still his.

In May 2021, The Stardew Valley album was released.

Burnout

After releasing a free update six months after the launch, Barone was finally burnout.

In 2017, he went on his first vacation since beginning to work on the game five years prior.

Along with his girlfriend Amber and his roommates, he made a cross-country loop to Washington and Oregon to see the solar eclipse, hitting Idaho, Utah, and California.

Barone has taken a few jabs at explaining the secrets to the success of Stardew Valley over the years, including the desire for meditative and relaxing games with charming characters.

Unfortunately, too many games focus on violence and competition, which he put at a minimum in his game.

So much so that he removed the ability to sell farm animals for meat, a feature in an earlier version of the game.

He found the game also resonated deeply with women, which is a lesser tapped market in gaming.

He loves that his game has brought joy to so many people.

Today, he continues to work on updates with his now growing team and has multiple other projects in the works.

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