Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone is still considering following through on his quarter-joking suggestion that a good life sim should include homewrecking and all of its ugly aftermath.

Stardew Valley is a farmland sandbox, and Barone explains to GameInformer in a new interview that he believes, "In a sandbox game, you should be able to do wicked things and then face the consequences." So while he disclaims he's against destroying a household just because you find kindly step-father of two Demetrius too erotic to bear – "I'm against that on a moral level," Barone says about infidelity – being able to do so slots perfectly into his game where almost anything is possible.

But "I wouldn't just make everyone be totally chill about it," Barone says about his hypothetical divorce update. "Everyone would hate you. It would cause a lot of chaos and disaster and suffering, and people would be angry, and you would ruin the family."

"I would be open to doing something like that," he continues, "but I wouldn't baby people about it. There would be very serious consequences."

But Barone's commitment to realism, when it comes to making sure Caroline would have an awkward time at aerobics class should she become an adulteress, is also what's keeping his foot on the brake. He hasn't yet introduced the divorce update that lingers on his mind, he says, because he's scared of what fans will think.

"Part of me is like, 'Well, maybe this is just too real,'" Barone says. "Maybe Stardew Valley is supposed to be, to some degree, an escape from those kinds of things. It's too realistic, you know?"

He certainly isn't wrong – Stardew Valley helped popularize the cozy game genre around 2020, and many veteran players return to the game for its sleepy moments and meditative tasks, like weeding the garden, or making crab cakes. But Barone must remember that we are all freaks for love, and there's an r/StardewValley post discussing his occasional threats about a divorce update with nearly 10,000 upvotes.

"I have no idea how mods work," says one comment with almost 500 upvotes, "but everyday I want to download the one where I can breakup Pierre for my future wife Caroline."

Another comment reminds a divorce skeptic that some Stardew players have never been completely kindhearted, saying, "I just spent 6 hours murdering dust sprites for an achievement." You hear that, Barone? Give them the scarlet letter!

Stardew Valley 1.7 update leaks "are fake," confirms ConcernedApe – and he has "no plans to ever add" Harvest Moon-style romance rivalries to the farming sim.

I've sunk about 200 hours into Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 at the time of writing, but today I learned something new about it: Henry isn't complimenting my sick photo-taking skills just to be nice; he's doing it to prevent me from being a dirty, rotten cheater.

If you've played the game and tinkered around at all with its photo mode, you'll know Henry loves to loudly comment on your pictures when you exit photo mode, sometimes alerting nearby guards you would've rather remained hidden from. Talking to PC Gamer, KCD2 lead designer Prokop Jirsa explains why this happens. KCD2 is a gorgeous game, and it deserves the extensive photo mode it has, but its developers didn't like how "you could start photo mode and look around corners" to gain an unfair advantage during stealth sections. Fair enough.

"So what we did is that, when you end the photo mode, Henry will comment about how nice the picture was. So he'll say 'Oh! What a nice view!' But this is actually heard in the game, so the guards will hear you," explains Jirsa. This was very much an intentional decision to curb cheating, but also to foster the sort of chaotic scenarios developer Warhorse thrives in.

"I still think it's quite a clever way to solve the cheating issue, but we also knew that it would create these weird, 'what the fuck' moments that are funny and shareable, and that work in our community," Jirsa says, adding that Henry's infamous 'I'm quite hungry' line was added for "exactly" the same reasons. "We knew it's just insane, but yeah, we're playful like this," he says.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead designer says "friction is intentionally" in the RPG because when "you overcome the friction, you feel better about yourself"