Gab Hernandez 
Stardew Valley is one of the most popular indie games in the world and is wildly popular across PC, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices, but does it have cross-platform multiplayer?
Multiplayer in Stardew Valley came two years after the game’s 2016 release. PC players got to experience multiplayer for the first time over GOG, Steam, and LAN in the 1.3.27 update in August 2018. The multiplayer features at the time were about what most expected, with chat rooms and new cabins for friends.
The Switch 1.3 update followed in December 2018, with PlayStation and Xbox releases. The PlayStation 4 multiplayer update wouldn’t come until September 2019, while the Xbox One update came even later in November 2019. The PlayStation Vita did not get multiplayer at all. Still, with all modern consoles boasting multiplayer, some fans hoped for cross-platform compatibility. But is that possible? The answer is known and, unfortunately, it’s not a good one.
Does Stardew Valley have cross-platform play?
Stardew Valley does not support cross-platform play on any platforms.
Unfortunately for star-crossed console players, crossplay won’t be coming anytime soon. The last update from Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone was in September 2018, a few months before the Nintendo Switch got multiplayer.
ConcernedApe said he would “look into [cross-platform multiplayer] more closely,” but nothing has materialized in Stardew Valley since then. Although ConcernedApe did not give any official reasons past “technical barriers,” it’s easy enough for fans to speculate on why it wouldn’t work.
The most immediate problem is the version differences between each platform. The PC port will always have the latest updates first, with console ports coming up months later, and often not at the same time. The version disparity means the developer is faced with two choices. Either synchronize all updates at the cost of much longer development gaps on all platforms to ensure minimal technical issues or simply avoid the issue altogether.
With ConcernedApe busy working on Haunted Chocolatier and bringing Stardew Valley 1.6 to consoles, the likelihood of cross-platform multiplayer arriving is extremely low. If crossplay ever does happen, it will likely be when ConcernedApe stops adding major updates to Stardew Valley. By that point, the problem of version disparity would be gone, provided every Stardew Valley port is on the same version.
At this point, Stardew Valley is at an advanced age for a non-live-service game. The fact that ConcernedApe shipped updates at such a late stage for the game makes it hard to complain about what features he hasn’t delivered on.
