It sounds absurd: There almost wasn’t a hit on Steam. Because the developer did not create a backup of his work.
When discussing particularly successful indie games, one cannot overlook Stardew Valley. The game has been around for 10 years and still counts among the long-lasting favorites on Steam. However, the fact that we can even play the game is a small miracle, as the developer made a fatal mistake during its creation: He did not create a backup.
Where did the information come from? The magazine PC Gamer recently dug up an old interview in which they spoke with ConcernedApe. It includes some statements that, after 10 years of the game’s continued success, still provide for one or another anecdote.
No backup, no plan, full success
How did the development go? The developer of what is arguably the most successful cozy game on Steam made a simple mistake: He had not created a backup of his game, which he had been working on for many months. When the PC crashed and several components were likely defective, he felt the future of the game passing before his eyes. But he bought a new computer and was able to recover the data. He also explained:
In hindsight, it seems just crazy to me that everything worked out. The whole development was so sloppy. It was the most intense indie development one could imagine: No professional process at all, I just learned things during the course of it, and the shoddiest code you can imagine. I’m almost embarrassed when I show my code to others!
Creating backups of work is actually standard practice. Most people who deal with larger projects and work on a PC automatically create a copy of their working hard drive, often even in duplicate. Precisely for the case that, in the event of a malfunction, weeks, months, or even years of work are not lost.
For his new project, Haunted Chocolatier, ConcernedApe is likely to approach the whole thing a bit more professionally. Now he also has a small team supporting him in his work – surely someone will come up with the idea to at least occasionally create a backup.
Cortyn says: Stardew Valley is one of those games that I return to approximately once a year since its release and play intensively for a few days. It’s like a little cure – a pleasant retreat into a relaxed world that captures the magic of Harvest Moon and is so much better at the same time.
Interestingly, Stardew Valley has shaped the cozy game market significantly. If you look around Steam today, you see dozens of games hitting the same note – and most of them probably wouldn’t exist without Stardew Valley. Therefore: A big thank you to the hard drive that at least saved the game data.
It also makes me glad about his promise that he would never charge for DLCs.
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