Eric Barone issues emergency Stardew Valley performance PSA: 'Remove all hats from pets'

Stardew Valley's major 1.6 update is now live on all platforms and, as so often happens with these things, there are a few problems cropping up. None of them seem too major, which is good news, but there does appear to be some performance issues cropping up for some players. Luckily, there is a workaround, and it may be the purest, most Stardew-like fix of all time.

"PSA: if you are experiencing performance issues in Stardew Valley 1.6, remove all hats from pets," Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone posted on X. "We will address the problem as soon as possible."

This is important, but maybe not for the reason you might think. Yes, degraded game performance is a problem, but the real issue here is the pets who are no longer wearing hats. It is vital in the Stardew world that pets be appropriately chapeau'd, and the longer your furry little buds go without their stylish lids, the worse the experience becomes for everyone.

As with the disappearing chickens, who it turns out were being stolen by invisible coyotes, Barone has a lore explanation for the pet-hat crisis: "There's rumors of a strange rash affecting pets' ears in Zuzu City and we just want to make sure those ears can breathe for a few days."

I won't say that Barone's lore-ification of Stardew Valley bugs has me hoping that other small technical troubles crop up just to see how he rolls with it, but I do hope he keeps it up. Bugs are inevitable anyway so we all might as well have some fun with them, and who knows what might emerge? The "invisible coyotes stealing chickens" bit led to a call for actual coyotes (of the adoptable, non-chicken-stealing kind) to be added to the game for real, and honestly that's not a bad idea at all. Barone hasn't yet commented on the likelihood of that actually happening, but given his can't stop, won't stop approach to Stardew Valley, I won't be at all surprised if it does.