Good news, lonely farmers! Earlier today Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, creator of Stardew Valley, announced that the game’s multiplayer patch is now in QA for the Nintendo Switch. Making the post on his official Twitter account, Barone added that he will make further announcements “when more concrete info becomes available.”
The Stardew Valley multiplayer update for Nintendo Switch is now in QA. Will let you all know ASAP when more concrete info becomes available!
— ConcernedApe (@ConcernedApe) October 2, 2018
For those less technical among us, QA is an abbreviation of quality assurance, or, the final stage of the patching process where a game is tested rigorously for errors. While that sounds promising for us lonely farmers, don’t allow your hopes to get too high yet. Even if the update is error-free, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be released in the immediate future. Nintendo is notorious for its long and arduous patch approval process. As fans of Golf Story know all too well, sometimes Nintendo takes weeks to process behind seemingly minute patches.
Today’s announcement comes as something of a surprise considering that just last month Barone stated that he had no timetable for the console release of Stardew Valley‘s multiplayer update. Posting from his official Twitter account on September 4th, Barone stated, “The truth is, I don’t have a set release date yet. I don’t want to make any vague promises, so all I can say is that it’s in development.”
While Barone hasn’t mentioned the status of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One multiplayer updates, it’s safe to assume they’re not too far behind. The PC, Mac, and Linux versions of Stardew Valley all received their respective multiplayer updates earlier this August.