Stardew Valley Beta Update Adds Multiplayer

There is a very cool retro game that has been on Steam for a long time now called Stardew Valley. I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing it and the graphics remind me of an early Zelda title on Gameboy. If you haven’t played the game, it’s certainly worth a try especially with a new beta update that fans will appreciate.

Stardew Valley 1.3 beta is available now and it adds in multiplayer capability. That means you can invite friends to help you work your farm and do other things. If you own the game and want to opt into the beta, you need to right-click the game in your Steam library and look for the “betas” tab. You then have to type the password for the branch, which is “jumpingjunimos”.

If you do all that correctly there will be a beta option in the drop-down box and Steam will start to download the beta update. The devs warn that since this is a beta there will be bugs. Players should back up the save files before playing the update located in %APPDATA%\StardewValley\Saves for Windows or ~/.config/StardewValley/Saves on Mac or Linux.

Players also need to remove any mods that arent compatible with the 1.3 update and a list of them is here. The old save files can be used in the new update and can be used to host multiplayer games. However, saves made in v1.3 cant be used in v1.2 of the game. Each player you invite for multiplayer does require their own home on your farm, so you will need to build a cabin for each player you invite.