If you’ve ever thought that the idyllic farming fantasy of Stardew Valley was too easy, there is a mod just for you. “Hardcore mode,” as it’s called, changes nothing about the game itself but will delete your save file if you use the Stardew Valley Wiki, the most useful community resource on the game.
As spotted by GamesRadar, the mod was created by software engineer Sylvie Nightshade on June 21. She was inspired by an article on Hard Drive (the video game equivalent of The Onion) posted only hours earlier on the same day titled “Stardew Valley’s New Hardcore Mode Deletes Your Farm if You Open the Wiki.” Her announcement of the mod on X (formerly Twitter) simply quote-posts the original Hard Drive article and adds, “so I made this real.”
As described in that original Hard Drive headline, Nightshade’s mod deletes any Stardew Valley save file you have if you open up the game’s wiki. This makes it a hardcore mode because of how essential the wiki has become for many players. It acts as a repository of knowledge on when certain plants are in season, how long they take to water, how much money you can sell plants for, what gifts villagers like, where certain fish are, and more. Stardew Valley’s cute aesthetic hides a lot of depth, and tackling the game sans guides is an extremely tall order.
So how does hardcore mode pull save deletion off? On the mod’s GitHub page, Nightshade explains that it does this by scanning the title of every window currently open on a user’s computer to check if ‘Stardew Valley Wiki’ is in the title. If it is, the mod erases your precious Stardew Valley save.
It’s a brutal but incredibly funny mod. It’s also incredible that it went live just twelve hours after the original joke from Hard Drive. I for one will never touch this mode because I value my farm and my relationship with Leah too much to start over.
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