I don't get the weird parasocial need to have celebrities/creators/whoever repeat the approved lines. "C'mon game dev, say the words! Say the words! If only the creator of Stardew Valley would say Trans Rights then surely that will solve everything!"

These people ruin EVERYTHING.

Streamer: plays game.

Pronoun people: 'wHAt aRe YOuR prONoUns!'

Normal gamers: 'STFU with your weird shit!'

Pronoun people: 'BoYCoT StreAMeR! TwaNSpObiA!'

I like how this "drama" happened this past April, then a huge update dropped over the summer and everyone and their grandma started playing again.

Nobody cares about game boycotts lmao. Didn't work for Hogwarts Legacy, didn't work for Stardew Valley.

I appreciate how Stardew only has male and female, and hope Haunted Chocolatier will be the same. It was relieving to me when he didn't put any trans stuff in the latest update like some people were calling for.

Low key hoping the dev is critical of the whole movement and that's why he hasn't said anything...

Stardew Valley players have been asking ConcernedApe to add pronouns to the character creator.

In response, LGBTQ+ players have faced abuse from others in the community.

What "abuse"? Being told to shut up and not play it if they don't like it?

As ConcernedApe has not commented on the situation yet, some are even calling for a boycott.

Smart dude! Gray rock those cry-bullies!

Twitch chats are being spammed with abuse, YouTubers such as Keemstar Show ex-producer ChrisTheNarc have tweeted about the calls for pronouns being an "insane take", while others are misgendering people in the community directly in their replies.

"OMG I WAS CALLED A 'SHE' IN REPLIES!!! THIS IS A MILLION TIMES WORSE THAN ALL THE RACIAL SLURS!!!!" 😭

Some trans streamers, such as QueerlyBee, have locked their social media accounts down after being targeted due to the growing vitriol. There are even allegations that some streamers are being doxxed, so many are now warning others away from playing the game until the hate blows over.

Allegations of doxing? But no proof?

As of writing, there has been no response from Barone. It's worth noting that he's a solo dev not just supporting Stardew Valley, but also developing a new game called Haunted Chocolatier. So, adding pronouns isn't as simple as it sounds, but many have tagged Barone online asking him to denounce the transphobia and harassment taking place within the community, to which he has also not responded.

I really hope they don't drive him out like they did to Scott Cawthon.

The fucking entitlement to make these kinds of demands on a solo dev who does most of the work on his games himself. Especially when mods exist that can give these assholes what they want (and ConcernedApe made the game easy to mod specifically for this purpose)

"I truly do not care about if ConcernedApe speaks on pronouns in the game anymore," one streamer said. "I want him to condemn the transphobia and violence against the trans members of the community he gained in creating Stardew Valley."

Why is that his job!? What "violence"!? Do they really think the guy has nothing better to do than get involved in every spat that goes on in the Stardew fandom?

"The silence from ConcernedApe regarding harassment towards trans folks in the community is disappointing," another tweeted. "I will no longer be playing Stardew or making content on this game."

"WAH! I'M QUITTING THE GAME BECAUSE THE GAME'S CREATOR DOESNT SWOOP IN TO DEFEND MY HONOR WHEN SOMEONE ONLINE CALLS ME BY THE WRONG PRONOUN!!"

LOL Get fucked. 🤣

"It truly breaks my heart to see the amount of people that are getting hurt from the situation".

I wish my life was so privileged that shit like this was a major problem

Here's a quote-

"I want him to condemn the transphobia and violence against the trans members of the community he gained in creating Stardew Valley."

He gained violence? WTF does that mean? How does a person gain violence?

Just when I think they have reached peak nonsense, they outdo themselves.

OMG, they already have absurd mods transing characters to make it the game they want... Just leave the guy alone....

That game has already made ConcernedApe and his team hilariously wealhy. You have already purchased the game code. What kind of boycott are they even attempting to stage at this point?

The funny as shit part is that the "outrage" is basically just circling in the TQIA toilet bowl online. You won't see shit about this unless you go hunting for it. Because NOBODY with a real life or two working braincells FUCKING CARES!

"It truly breaks my heart to see the amount of people that are getting hurt from the situation".

My gaaaaahd, these people are so insufferable. Breaks your heart? People getting hurt? Please gain some perspective for one solitary second. It’s a GAME. What breaks my heart is the actual women and children getting actually harmed in the world. Grass, touch it!

I’d play stardew valley again if only I wasn’t so easily addicted to that game. I still don’t know of any other game that doesn’t allow TRA nonsense and also allows lesbian relationships to bloom. I see myself a lot in the girl who’s the mysterious artist that lives outside of town.

Considering how tinder is so abysmal to even find an actual lesbian woman to go on dates with because of the TIM infestation of our spaces, I am becoming even more hopeless that I’ll find love. And that’s why that game is too addicting to me. It’s like that scene in Harry Potter with the magical mirror.

That really shows so well it IS NOT about them wanting to just "live their lives in peace". They NEED to force others to feed into their delusions and make believe fantasy.

I thought Krobus (nonhuman character you can “marry” as a platonic roommate) was a they/them, but I believe that’s just an addition from the expanded Stardew Valley mod (which is overall fun, but broken badly with the latest update.)

I’m glad that CA hasn’t responded to these absurd concerns. This game is HOW old? And so popular and cathartic for many of us. Are pronouns REALLY the biggest concern of most gamers? I remember growing up with the OG Pokémon games, and just dealing with playing as a 10-year-old boy named Red. Like, I didn’t shake and cry. It’s a game. It was fine lol. Gameboy Legend of Zelda, playing as Link? Fine, whatever. Mario and Luigi? Gimme that controller, I’ll rock it and not blink twice because my avatar is male. 😄

It’s so absurd to me that we have entered an era where it’s not enough to have male and female characters who are fully customizable. Oh, no, we need to ALSO add pronouns and surgery scars so EVERYONE feels included!

Remember when gaming was about escapism? Just play the character closest to who you want to be, and call it a day. No one is judging. If your true desire is to play a mutilated social recluse who is overweight and needs a walker, uh… why? You COULD play as a beautiful male or female with androgynous features. Stardew Valley in particular has very retro graphics so you can barely even tell your character’s features. Same-sex relationships are totally cool. But ohhh nooo it’s not enough to be a man if you want he/him pronouns, or a woman if you want she/her. I just don’t get it.

**as an aside, you actually have a very slight advantage if you play as a female character in Stardew Valley. At a certain point if you are playing a male farmer, your mother sends you cookies. If you’re playing as a female, at the same point in the timeline your father sends you money. 😅

I wish the only problem I had was pronouns in a game. That’s one thing I don’t like about the cozy gaming community, it seems like they need all these gender special options and that’s what makes or breaks a game. What happened to if you don’t like it, don’t play it?

I don't even think this is my gender critical views talking - this is a game where gender doesn't matter at all. It's sweet and calm wish fulfillment. You can be whoever you want to be just by nature of the game. It's an absurd thing to focus on.

crybullies make me sick.

Why do these SJW losers always do this to indie devs? There was another game created by a solo artist (i cannot remember the name of it now) that had a similar problem. It was a sim game set in a medieval fantasy where the goal is to build a kingdom by starting a business or a kingdom, having kids, and those children going on to continue whatever legacy path you set them on. And SJW cry-bullies complained about not enough LGBT representation. In a game where HAVING CHILDREN is an important part of the game mechanic.

The dev never even said he wouldn't do it or that he wouldn't introduce pronouns, gay marriage, or adopting kids in future updates. Just that he didn't have time for all that right now as a solo dev. But they kept complaining until he finally told them all to fuck off.

I was already surprised that Stardew Valley managed to last as long as it has while having a clearly gendered binary choice in character creator.

Glad to see that Concerned Ape stood his ground. If he wasn't GC before, this experience will no doubt get him thinking...

This is pretty old, but from what i've seen the dev ConcernedApe still has not commented. I am against harassment of course, but it makes me wonder if it really is. We know many TRAs call anything less than total fawning transphobia. But, the game always talks to the player character in 2nd person pronouns. Maybe there is a scene where you aren't there or something, but if it happens at all, it's rarely. And the male and female avatar aren't realistic.

There’s been a mod to “degender” the game for years, and now it has an option for custom pronouns! Download that and leave the poor dude—who is continuing to give us substantial content updates for free, btw!—alone.

I hope he doesn’t cave, and continues to pour his time into the content and features he actually wants to work on.

I can't wait for the trans mob to get the hell away from my favorite cozy game genres and stay away forever.

They will cry Transphobia unless they are catered to at all times.

This entitlement from folks who live on soc. media to compel celebrities, companies, etc. to publicly state their political opinions is such b.s. . It's nobody's business, really. These morons can't like anything unless it passes a damn checklist that lines up identically with their own beliefs.

Oh my God the patch finally hit Switch?? I'm gonna sink another 500 hours into my farm

Lmao imagine. “Give us pronouns! We know you especially made it so literally anyone can be anything and we don’t even have to worry about pronouns because the game is fake and we project our own stories onto it, but if you don’t give us a set of digital pronouns to use, we will be oppressed!”

Like… but adding pronouns is even more bigoted than omitting them. How will concernedape ever manage to learn every single one in existence to add in? And then let us propose, he lets you fill in a box with your personal pronouns, what about the people with non-textual pronouns, like those that draw them or express them with hand signals? Ah I hate humanity they never think of the interpretive dance identities.

I think about celebrity game shows where they compete for money for charity, and they get to pick their charity based on what's important to them. One might donate to the cause of sustainable fishing, another might donate to leukemia research, and another night donate to programs designed to help American families out of poverty.

All of us, really, should get to have different causes and priorities in the world that we primarily focus on and educate ourselves about, maybe give money or labor to, or even just spread awareness about. It's a wonderful thing that there are lots of different kinds of people with different backgrounds and interests and causes, because if everyone was obligated to prioritize one problem in the world, all the others would suffer.

There are so many important issues on Planet Earth that I will probably never even learn about, and I am grateful for the people who are bringing attention to them and doing something about them, even if I never know.

But now it seems like there are really just a few canonical causes you're supposed to prioritize and if you don't actively and adequately and with the correct language signal that these causes are the Biggest Deal Ever to you and that you will, on demand, reframe your thinking and your art and your speech around these causes. It seems unfair to people to expect them to all have the same focus and priorities, and unfair to the world that there seems to be a monopoly on compassion in certain parts of the world, directing it solely towards one to three things with everything else relegated to side causes.

I know that we here at Ovarit do not consider most of these mandatory causes to be philanthropic and beneficial to begin with, but my point is that even if they were good, it would still be very bad to demand this of people.

EDIT/P.S. Also, it's been said before, but it really goes to show that this viewpoint is not as oppressed and silenced and downtrodden and marginalized as they suggest, when they can just demand this sort of thing of random indie game devs that have nothing to do with this stuff. And it's considered outrageous if they don't respond by groveling and changing their game around these demands. Imagine if we had the power to demand that game devs change their games and that we could kick up a giant fuss about it. Lol

Oh wow, this is really positive! I've already got Stardew Valley, but I just checked out the developer in case I could buy another game to show my support. Unfortunately, there aren't any on steam yet, but I've seen from the comments he has one called Haunted Chocolatier coming out - assuming he doesn't cave, I'll buy that when it come out.

I dunno what concerned ape thinks about this but sv has been so popular that I doubt he’ll be cancelled in any real sense over it.

One of my favourite games only has male/female options for character creation, but on discord about a quarter of the people have pronouns in bio (especially mods/admins for some reason) so it's only a matter of time until they bring the pressure. It would be a shame if that were to happen.

But where was the outrage over how long it took to be able to make the nursery in your house an optional feature if you didn't have kids? Where is the outrage over how you STILL have to use mods to get your spouse to not pester you for babies? Where is the outrage for any number of oversimplified plotlines around the women in town who are some varying degrees of miserable despite having these idealised family lives? SV is a very trad lifescript-y game, in a way that truly bothers me, but also, if you're so out of sorts because you need to have your pronouns acknowledged while chopping wood and fishing for hundreds of hours? I don't know man, I suspect a game ain't gonna help you.

What did the game supposedly do wrong anyway?