The wait for Stardew Valley 1.6 is finally very close to over. And as you already know, if you are familiar with this game and the history surrounding it, we are not talking about another update, no, we are facing another example of the immeasurable commitment of Eric Barone, its creator, both with the game and with the great community of players. A story that shows us that disgraces like The Day Before have a counterpart that, while not getting as much attention, deserves all the credit.

For those unfamiliar with this story, let’s take a look at its brief summary. Eric Barone, a big fan of farming games and therefore clear about what he was missing in them, got to work and started designing Stardew Valley in 2012. It was his first project and Because he had no funds, he decided to take over 100% of his creationfrom programming to character design, music composition, dialogue writing, etc. And so, after four years of work, he released his first version in 2016, a version that, although it was the first to be released to the public, was already quite polished and gained public favor.

Since then a Until December 2020, Barone continued to add content to the game, which got to it through updates (all free). That year, it released Stardew Valley 1.5, which would theoretically be its last, after which it stopped creating additional content for the game. This update also made its way to smartphone versions early last year, when Barone had been involved in his second project, Haunted Chocolatier, for more than a year.

Despite this announcement that no more updates would be published, the developer released six minor updates that did not add content to the game, but fixed some issues and improved performance. But a big surprise came in April last year, when Barone announced that he is working on Stardew Valley 1.6, a new update that would initially only improve the game’s mod system, but we later learned that it would bring new content to the game. And just a few weeks ago, Barone confirmed that the most demanding part of its development had already been completed, announcing that it would see the light of day throughout this year.

Well, the “this year” thing left many of us expecting that the wait might be a long one, but luckily it won’t be, because as you can see in tweet Posted by Baron Stardew Valley update 1.6 will arrive on March 19th on the PC version. Of course, there’s no date for the console and smartphone versions at the moment, but in the same report, the developer says they’ll arrive “as soon as possible.”

Barone, or ConcernedApe as he is known, is part of a small but very notable list of developers who have been able to achieve huge success with projects of a modest nature, but in which dedication and care more than covered the lack of resources. I’ve said this on other occasions, but it’s always a good time to say it again I wish that example would spread among the many big studios that really have a lot more resources, but that don’t put a tenth of the care and affection into their development that we can see in Stardew Valley.