Stardew Valley dethrones Valve classic Portal 2 as Steam’s top-rated game

It's Portal 2... the Valve classic is Portal 2

It might feel wrong to call their last proper sit down at a couch/desk singeplayer experience a "classic", but its older than Half-Life one was when it came out.
That makes me feel old and I wasn't even around for HL1. How's your back feeling, millennials?
- Not great. Thanks for asking.
- How's your back feeling, millennials?
  Wearing good shoes and keeping my weight down and staying active so it feels fine.
- I was 22 when Half-Life came out. I'm tired.
- You didn't have to be such a jerk about the back pain tho.
- Doing fine. Sit up straight, do some light exercises, stretch, youll feel fine
- Shit, you're correct. It's hard to believe. It feels like my first play of Portal 2 was just a couple years ago. It has been fourteen years...
- That makes me feel old and I wasn't even around for HL1. How's your back feeling, millennials?
  I'm not old you're young! I'm not hunched over grabbing my back grimacing that's just my power stance!
- pretty okay, just had a shower and I'm chilling on the couch with my cat. She is steadily purring. comfort level is around a 7.8, maybe 7.9.
  I bought HL1's GOTY edition when it came out.
- Ergonomic chairs, high end sports cars, and staying active has kept my back in great shape.
  Also, {{{posture check}}}
- I've been biking so much lately that my legs are getting hella toned, the rest of my body is starting to tone too and I'm feeling much more alive and healthy than I have at any other point in my life!
- 34 and need a cane. Now get off my parents lawn!
- We’re at that age where you have to exercise and watch what you eat if you want to be in good health (and not have your back hurt.) The friends I grew up with who haven’t touched a vegetable in their life, no longer happen to look healthy and thin.
writing headlines like that should earn a nice lengthy face tazing.
Here i was imagining "valve classic" was somehow a wildly popular game ive never heard of

And I'd say that it is 100% deserved. Stardew Valley is a once in a lifetime kind of game and has one of the best developers you could ask for. Free new content and updates for 10 years and it's still like $20 and frequently on sale. The developer actually tweeted out once that if he ever charged for new content that he'd want everyone to publicly shame him.

“I swear on the honor of my family name, i will never charge money for a DLC or update for as long as I live. Screencap this and shame me if I ever violate this oath.”

Stardew Valley is the gaming industry at its best and one of the best indie games out there.

My only issue has always been that I cannot throw more money at the ape. So I buy the game for gaming-adjacent friends and almost always ~~ruin their lives~~ convert them
- Couldn’t agree more. I’ve re-purchased the game for Switch and iOS after already having it on my PC for ages. I didn’t really want to play it on those platforms but just wanted to give more money to concerned ape.
- That's what I do too. I've bought it for all my friends or have convinced them to get it. Feels like I'm a drug dealer trying to push it on everyone I know lol.
And at those prices I’ve bought it at least twice
- I’ve bought it at least 5 times; sent it to a lot of family members.
Probably only surpassed by Minecraft, although that is of course no longer an indie game today
- The copy of Minecraft I bought back then no longer works (there was a bunch of buggy account change stuff that never worked for me). My copy of stardew valley still just works.
- I think I would much rather watch a stardew Valley movie than a Minecraft movie
Not that it should be expected to dish out free content and never charge for DLC. Not every game has the kind of profit margin Stardew Valley has.
- Idk Stardew Valley is a passion project if I've ever seen one. Sure, concernedape is making extraordinary profits, but it has to feel way better to have a decent size of the planet's population playing and connecting with the project they poured their heart and soul into.
- But at the same time there are plenty of indie devs that sell games for $30 and then have a few $15 DLC on top of that after a few years. Not throwing shade at those other devs, more just saying that the dev for Stardew Valley could have sold DLC and nobody would have questioned it but chose not to. You could be like Stardew Valley and keep the game cheap, free updates, and frequent sales or you could be like Factorio and refuse to ever put your game on sale and up the price every couple of years and come out with a $20 DLC. And I'd be shocked if Stardew Valley has made less money than Factorio in the long run, especially with it being the in number one place right now.
- Considering how much time he spent developing it, I doubt the profit margin is actually all that good.
Meh, I prefer Terraria.

I can never relax with that game. I just get it in my head that I must get my chores done right now and it always fucks my head up.

What valuing quality over profit does to a mf

To be fair, portal 2 was also built when valve valued quality over profit.
- when valve valued quality over profit.
  I like this
  Fuck valve and their gambling

Good.

Nothing against Portal 2, but Stardew Valley just offers so much more for so much longer

In game time isn't everyone's metric for a good game. Some of my favorite games only have a few hours of content, but those few hours are really good.
I've watched some let's plays of Starcraft Valley, and I'm glad I did because I probably wouldn't like it, and if I had to give it a rating, it would be pretty mediocre.
I think it being so positively rated is that there are a ton of casual gamers that this type of game really appeals to, not that it has a lot to do.
- I know it's a typo, but now I want a cozy space ranch game based in the world of StarCraft.
Stardew lost 100% of it's appeal to me once I learned that the events just repeat year after year and there are no consequences for doing nothing. I really want to get into the cozy vibe gaming space but I just can't seem to do it.
- I would end up with a farm that took all day to water, and never enough time to go down in any mine far enough to find iridium enough to make sprinklers out of, and then stop playing.
Can't agree with this. I got dozens of hours out of Portal 2, simply from replaying it so many times (which is an amazing feat in of itself because I never finish games).
Meanwhile I was bored of Stardew Valley after two hours of wandering around and not being able to find anything to do. From what I've gathered, the game expects you to figure out how play it on your own. I'm in my late 30s and I have bills to pay. I don't have the time nor the patience for a game like that anymore.
Edit: Point I forgot to make is that I feel like for a game to be considered the highest rated among them all, it should have universal appeal. But that's just my 2¢.
- I preface this with the caveat that all grants are subjective and you can like what you like.
  Stardew Valley is a love letter to the harvest Moon games(and I guess rune factory as well). If you have ever encountered those games you immediately know what to do in Stardew.
  I think where Stardew is different is that it came later and benefited massively from the "cozy game" popularity.
  While I played harvest Moon on a super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and Gameboy my girl friend who did not have that exposure growing up loves Stardew. This generational and gender Crossing game has tapped markets that were not available back then. Couple that with the fact that at this point you can play that game on basically any platform from phone to console, new and old and it's totally understandable why this headline might be true.
- This is pretty much how I am, too. I've purchased SDV three times but could never get into it because I have no idea what I need to do.
  Big fan of the dev though and how much he does for the game, even if I don't personally play.

Portal is such a great series. I hope we get a new one one day.

It's one of my favorite games of all time, but I don't think Portal 2's basic formula would be culturally relevant if it was reused today. The quippy writing is very 2010s-coded (à la Guardians of the Galaxy), the gameplay is a bit too simple to be re-used as is in 2025, and the sweet&short linear storyline of Portal 2 would ironically be lacking ambition for a successor to Portal 2.
Like all truly Great pieces of classic media, Portal 2 is a product of a skilled and truly passionate team getting together at the perfect time with the right idea, and reaching its public at a culturally relevant time.
The Portal universe still has stories to tell, and there are still test chambers to solve, so I obviously wouldn't complain if Portal 3 came out, but I understand why Valve wouldn't want to make a barely decent game in the shadow of Portal 2.
- The Talos Principle became an interesting spin on the idea of FPS puzzles that try to keep you engaged. They got more direct with introducing the lore of the world around each time (P1<TTP1≈P2<TTP2). The puzzles are probably less eye-catching because you rarely shoot yourself into air, they are closer to classic 2d logic timekiller games, but I find these games are what Valve need to look at to see if they want to expand the world like that in their own way. If we assume Portal 3 would be about portals, wouldn't reinvent the formula from the ground up, I think they'd need to go for higher stakes, and seemingly expanding the world or the mission at hand (from the probably sterile conditions of it all affecting just Chel and Apperture's robots and facilities), be it an escape into the outer world of some sort (although it overlaps with Half-Life, is it bad?) or make her herself not the only thing at stake. My only hope is that it won't be AR\VR\whatever experience because it would make me nauseos and\or poor.
I had to settle for Lego Dimensions. Better than nothing. And GLaDOS arguing with HAL 9000 was pretty epic.
- Both Portal levels and both Doctor Who levels were great.
If you like portal you may also like superliminal. It's the only game I've found that scratches the similar itch
- For the puzzle part, sure, but not the humor. I like The Stanley Parable for that aspect.
- For anyone that hasn't seen it, Portal: Reloaded is a fan-made dlc that's really quite good as well.
- I'd also recommend The Talos Principle and The Turing Test for similar itch scratches.
- In a similar vein to Superluminal, I'd also recommend Viewfinder, it's kinda like Portal but with a camera rather than a Portal gun.

The fuck is with the clickbait title? For shame, OP

Edit: Thanks for changing it.

How exactly?
- It didn't mention portal 2 before OP edited the title

No pressure on their next game or anything.

Deadlock doesn't look bad
- I've been over the hero shooter fad for almost a decade. Where are the actually new ideas for the genre?

Well it is the best game.

Bobby Lee did it.

God I wish I could enjoy it. I feel like I'm missing out. I just, I don't get it :(

Are you into dramatic NPCs? If no, you have to play it multiplayer with someone who gives a crap about pixel people.
I tried playing it alone but every system in the game is puddle deep so I was only able to play until winter by myself.
Then I played it with my girlfriend, and I spent 100 fondly remembered hours.
- <3
While I enjoyed it, it was also very stressful. I think we just played wrong. We covered every millimeter of the plot with farms or other useful stuff and then proceeded to be busy for more than half the day with just maintenance. At some point this meant that we never got to explore and often barely had time to go to the stores or talk to the people in the village.
Apart from overcooked it was probably the most stressful game Is ever played and it's not supposed to be like that
- The urge to make even more money
  The days are just too short in the game
- Yeah my problem with stardew is I feel too invested in min-maxing my time so I end up stressing over every minute in the game and it's too exhuasting
- I never understand why anyone puts together those massive farms. Personally, I always end up leaving the vast majority of the space unused. My farms only ever occupy the space directly in front of the house, and even that needs sprinklers asap.
There are probably games or other media that you love that the average Stardew Valley fan wouldn't click with. You're not missing out, you've just got other stuff you enjoy.
- Very true, but then again most Overwhelmingly Positive games I find amazing. I do have a long list of games I love and a selection I actually always keep installed, some of which are mediocre by many people's standards ;)

jesus did i go back in time???

No, my child. You are where you belong.
- As a DS9 fan, to me that sounds way meaner than you probably intended.

Published: Jul 08, 2025, 22:37

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