Stardew Valley is coming to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC

Stardew Valley is coming to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC.

Creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone announced the upcoming Game Pass release during today's ID@Xbox showcase. Barone stressed that the exact release date hasn't been decided, but that the Game Pass version should arrive "probably sometime in the fall." 

Stardew Valley originally blew up on PC and has since come to basically every platform under the sun, but an Xbox Game Pass release will still make the game even more accessible, if only by making it easier to try (and good luck putting it down after you try it). Game Pass remains one of the best deals in gaming, if not the best deal, and adding Stardew to its already extensive library is yet another cherry on top. 

Barone and his team have kept Stardew relevant and active over the years with regular patches and larger updates, the most recent being update 1.5. There's a not-insignificant chance we'll see a Stardew Valley 1.6 update sometime in the future, but we've yet to hear anything about it. 

"The most recent update has been – I'd call it the biggest update to Stardew Valley ever," Barone said on the Xbox stream. "Which it is, objectively. It seems like people really loved it, and the game kind of had a new resurgence in popularity after the update came out. I've been really happy with the response to that. The update adds a huge amount of stuff to the game, especially the end-game."

"I'm of the mindset that I could probably continue working on Stardew Valley forever with the amount of ideas I have," he added. "I love the world. I love making it better. I feel like it's a never-ending thing I could do to make it better. So I just put those ideas in these updates and keep the game going, and it's been fun."

On top of new Stardew content, Barone is constantly working on a new project which he says will likely see a "spur-of-the-moment" reveal.