Stardew Valley now has a hardcore mode thanks to a stupid joke, but it’s no laughing matter – you’ll lose your save if you use the guide

If you prefer life in the wild, cozy farming sim Stardew Valley now has a hardcore mode mod.

Stardew Valley isn’t the kind of game you could make a hardcore mode for. It’s supposed to be a casual, down-to-earth game, not something like Elden Ring. Maybe you could make crops require more specific care, money be harder to earn, or you could die, but that basically goes against the spirit of the game. Last week, however, satirical gaming news outlet Hard Drive proposed its own hardcore mode: if you open the game’s official wiki, your farm will be deleted. Any experienced Stardew Valley player knows that the wiki is the place to go for all your farming needs, so such a challenge would probably be impossible.

But as mentioned before, Hard Drive was just a satire, so it obviously wasn’t true. But, well, now it’s real! Within a day of the Hard Drive article being published, someone made a real mod that you can download that checks if you have the wiki open (thanks, GamesRadar). The user who made it, nightshademagia, shows it off in a short video above, and yes, as soon as you open the wiki, your save file is immediately deleted, and if you try to open it again, it’s gone. Now, if you have a save file that you’ve been playing for a long time, I obviously wouldn’t recommend doing this, although I suppose simply not opening the Stardew Valley Wiki doesn’t seem like much of a challenge.

While the mod might be a bit of a joke, Stardew Valley creator Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone’s next game, Haunted Chocolatier, is definitely not. The indie developer announced the game back in 2021, and recently said that he feels the pressure to get it out, but he’s taking his time so it doesn’t end up being a bad game.