Steam Deck Stardew Valley Mod Multiplayer Tutorial

Fixing Steam Deck Multiplayer Connection Issues

If you encounter the multiplayer screen stuck on “Connecting to online services” when running Stardew Valley on Steam Deck, you can fix it by adjusting the compatibility settings. Open the game's compatibility options and select Proton 9.0-4 to restore normal multiplayer functionality.

Mod Installation Tutorial for Multiplayer Mode

Because enabling Proton compatibility disables the existing Linux version of SMAPI, mods will not load. To use mods in multiplayer, you need to manually install the Windows version of SMAPI using the steps below.

Manual SMAPI Installation Steps

1. Get the installation files: Switch to Desktop Mode, download and extract the SMAPI installer. Inside the folder, locate the internal/windows/install.dat file. To extract it easily, change its extension from .dat to .zip.
2. Deploy the files: Copy the extracted files into the Stardew Valley game root directory. Make sure StardewModdingAPI.exe is in the same folder as the game's main executable.
3. Configure the dependency file: In the game folder, find StardewValley.deps.json, duplicate it, and rename the copy to StardewModdingAPI.deps.json.
4. Rename the executables (critical step):
   • Rename the original game program StardewValley.exe to StardewValley-original.exe.
   • Rename StardewModdingAPI.exe to StardewValley.exe.

After renaming the files, launching the game through Steam will automatically run SMAPI to load your mods while still using Proton compatibility for multiplayer support.