Stardew Valley 1.6 kicked up a mad dash for modders, but they were in good hands

polygon.com:

Hold on to your parsnips, because an apocalypse has struck the pastoral lands of Stardew Valley.

No, it wasn’t a game-breaking bug or new content. Rather, the highly anticipated Stardew Valley 1.6 update introduced changes that overhauled the back end and rendered several of its most popular mods completely useless. While mod compatibility might not be at the top of mind for every fan, it’s paramount in the larger Stardew Valley community, where a single mod might have more than 10 million downloads. Now, the 1.6 update has kicked off a frenzied scramble among its enthusiast creators to fix their content and mitigate the effects of what people in the community are calling the “modpocalypse.”

But it’s not all bad news. Update 1.6 might be one of the biggest turning points for modding in the game’s history and will make it easier to add new content, like characters and music. Previously, certain changes required technical programming knowledge, but thanks to improvements made in 1.6, it’s easier than ever to create mods. Polygon spoke with creators behind some of the biggest mods, and while they mentioned the challenges that came with all the current dysfunctional mods, in the opinion of Stardew Valley Expanded creator turned Stardew Valley developer Devin Hedegaard, the changes will “make the modding community stronger than ever before.”

According to Hedegaard, better known as FlashShifter, the game was developed in a way where you “would need to be a programmer“ to edit and add things behind the scenes. Content Patcher, a popular program for modders, made it much easier to add content, but there were limitations on what you could use it for. Now, modders can use it to edit and add even more elements to the game, like animals and music, that you couldn’t before. “With Content Patcher, you don’t need to be a programmer, you just need to be able to read data and think logically. And you can add things very easily now. [...] It was easy before, but now it’s even