Stardew Valley peaks at nearly 150k concurrent players, becoming most played farming sim on Steam

Within just hours after the release of (massive) patch 1.6, Stardew Valley has set a new record for peak concurrent players on Steam. The game is doing better than ever, even eight years after its launch.

On March 19, Eric Barone aka ConcernedApe released the long-awaited 1.6 update for his evergreen hit Stardew Valley. It added a lot (like, a LOT) of new content to the game, including new festivals, events, dialogues, pets, items, end-game skill system, new farm type… the list goes on, you can read it in full here.

Shortly after launch, Stardew Valley’s active player count crossed the 100k mark for the first time ever. According to SteamDB, the game eventually peaked at 146,159 concurrent users.

Its previous record of 94k CCU was set in January 2021. It is impressive to see such an old title reach new heights, which is a testament to Stardew Valley’s devoted community and its ability to retain players over the years.

The 146k peak makes Stardew Valley the most played game with the Farming Sim tag on Steam. It is is followed by Farming Simulator 22 (105.6k CCU), Dave the Diver (98.4k CCU), Farming Simulator 19 (59.4k CCU), and Core Keeper (34.5k CCU).

Stardew Valley can also be considered the top title with the Life Sim tag, when excluding sandbox RPG Broke Protocol, which reached its peak of 147k CCU in March 2019 and has never come anywhere close to it (with the average player count way below 1,000). In this category, ConcernedApe’s game is followed by Crusader’s Kings III (98.8k CCU) and The Sims 4 (96.3k CCU), VPet (85.5k CCU), and Nobody — The Turnaround (82.5k CCU).

Top 15 games with the Farming Sim tag on Steam by peak concurrent players (via SteamDB)

Last month, Eric Barone announced that Stardew Valley had surpassed 30 million copies sold, with 19 million units sold on PC alone. This makes it one of the most successful indie titles of all time, with the developer saying that he is “eternally grateful to the players for making all of this possible.”