The developer of Stardew Valley has rolled back the farming sim's latest update following some translation issues for Chinese-language players.
On April 23, following the release of the Stardew Valley 1.6.4 patch, Eric 'ConcernedApe' Barone penned a statement for players of the Chinese language edition of the farming sim. According to the update's official patch notes, 1.6.4 made "many edits and improvements to the Chinese version" and "changed the Chinese fonts to make them more appealing and readable."
It seems these changes haven't been received particularly well by those playing Stardew Valley in Chinese, causing the developer to retract some of the 1.6.4 patch. Barone's tweet is written in Chinese but was machine-translated by several users in the replies to the tweet. "Dear Chinese players," the post starts. "We have received a lot of feedback about the changes made in version 1.6.4 of Stardew Valley."
A message to Stardew Valley's Chinese players:致《星露谷物语》中国玩家的一封信 pic.twitter.com/H41bdTzbmvApril 23, 2024
The post continues: "Therefore, we decided to restore the translation changes and fonts to version 1.6.3 (smoothing fonts is still an option). This change will be made in the next few days. In the future, we will take a more cautious attitude toward translation modification and pay more attention to player feedback. I apologize for any doubts caused by this. Thank you for playing Stardew Valley and for your support."
There haven't been any examples, but a few players have theorized that some of the translations could be "incorrect" or seen as "rude" to native speakers - causing NPCs to appear meaner than they're supposed to be. A fan in the replies to the tweet above has pointed out a similar instance in the French version that seems to refer to a spirit (as in alcohol) as a ghost.
The fourth iteration of the huge Stardew Valley 1.6 update released in March was rolled out late last week and featured several quality-of-life upgrades and minor changes. Some of the biggest additions are the 20 new 'alternate' mine layouts, 20 new volcano mine layouts, a new fishing feature called 'fish frenzies', a new "special" cutscene, and more.
If you're still waiting for the Stardew Valley 1.6 update to make its way to other platforms, don't worry, it's still in development for console and mobile, but ConcernedApe has "no specific release date" yet.
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