"Screencap this and shame me if I ever violate this oath," Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone said on Twitter.
Players have been enjoying Stardew Valley's massive 1.6 update since it arrived back in March—but only if they're playing on PC. Months later, the update that brought the new meadowlands farm type, several new festivals, support for 8-player co-op, and tons more features and fixes still hasn't appeared on other platforms like PlayStations 4 and 5, various Xboxes, the Nintendo Switch, and mobile phones.
This delay, expectedly, has led to some impatience among players who have waited for months for the big patch to arrive. Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone is well aware of all the anxious fidgeting going on in the community as they await news of the update's release date on other platforms.
"I know it is taking a long time, it's on my mind every minute," Barone said on Twitter on July 21. "I have personally been working on the mobile port every day."
Not everyone is complaining. There are members of the community expressing support, such as one Twitter user who posted: "As long as everything you add is completely free, with a bunch of new content, qol, etc, people won’t complain for the wait." I should point out that this tweet is not actually true—there are players complaining, and there will always be players complaining. (Plus, saying you won't complain as long as you're given "a bunch of new content" for free isn't exactly a ringing statement of support, really.)
But Barone was quick to point out, and in a surprisingly dramatic fashion, that yes, the update is free, and updates to Stardew Valley will always be free, so long as his lungs draw breath.
"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," Barone responded on Twitter.
"Screencap this and shame me if I ever violate this oath," he added. One can imagine him slashing his palm with a dagger and holding it skyward, clenched fist oozing blood as lightning strikes overhead.
Now I'm no lawyer, but I think I spy a couple of loopholes in this solemn promise. First, it doesn't explicitly cover expansions, which are often considered different beasts from DLC, so Barone could wriggle out of his oath that way if he ever wanted to (though he would still be heavily shamed, I'm sure).
I'd also like to point out that this oath only lasts the duration of Barone's life, and doesn't carry over to a subsequent owner in the event of his death. What if Barone has a greedy and evil heir (Derrick Barone?) who starts charging for gardening tool reskins and selling $10 emotes and doing promotional tie-ins with Mountain Dew? This blood oath is already looking pretty sloppy.
And is this promise just for Stardew Valley? Barone didn't specify that he was only talking about his farming life sim and not his next game, Haunted Chocolatier, which is currently in development—or would be in development if Barone wasn't so hard at work making 1.6 available on mobile. Will his next game carry the same promise to never charge for DLC? After the years of free support for Stardew Valley I think he'd be perfectly justified to charge a few bucks for some Haunted Chocolatier DLC, but Barone might have other ideas.
