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Stardew Valley is getting a competitive farming tournament

Emily Morrow
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ConcernedApe, the creator of farming sim megahit Stardew Valley, has announced the first Stardew Valley Cup. The competition, created in partnership with prominent Stardew Valley Twitch streamer UnsurpassableZ, will take place at 9 a.m. PT on September 4 and will feature a prize pool of over $40,000. Four teams of four players will compete in a variety of in-game farming challenges to see who will take home the Cup.

The competition comes on the heels of Stardew Valley‘s big multiplayer update, which allows players to build the same farm together, as well as the news that the game will be coming to Xbox Game Pass sometime this fall.

In collaboration with @UnsurpassableZ, I'm pleased to announce the 1st official Stardew Valley Cup! It's a competition of skill, knowledge, and teamwork, with a prize pool of over $40k. See some of Stardew's most dedicated players in their element! Main event is Sept. 4th 9am PST pic.twitter.com/qtDW5e5LvD

— ConcernedApe (@ConcernedApe) August 21, 2021

While ConcernedApe’s video announcing the competition didn’t say exactly what the challenges will be, he mentions that the Cup will test the chosen players’ “skill, knowledge, and teamwork.”

UnsurpassableZ later took to his own YouTube channel to explain the Cup in more detail. He said that the challenges will explore “all parts of Stardew Valley,” and each will be worth a different amount of points based on its difficulty. At the end of the competition, the team with the most points wins. The challenges include a huge variety of tasks like cooking a dish, catching 20 different fish, and reaching level 10 in a skill.

The creation of a competition involving Stardew Valley is an odd choice, as the game is explicitly designed to be relaxing. Like many simulation games, it has an eventual objective, but most of the game involves simply building up your farm the way you see fit, tending to your crops and animals, and befriending the locals. To involve competition in the game seems to run counter to its design philosophy, but that hasn’t stopped many of the streamers and personalities involved in the Cup from attempting world records or perfect runs in the game.

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