Baldur’s Gate 3 mod for Stardew Valley called “amazing” by Larian’s game director, then taken down by lawyers

Making games in the year 2025, as you may have noticed by the depressingly frequent stories of layoffs and studio closures lately, is not easy. Making mods for those games is even trickier, since modders are generally working unpaid, releasing their work for free, and often occupy a murky legal area. 

So it proves for Baldur’s Village, a mod that reimagines Stardew Valley with characters from the 2023 smash RPG hit. Only weeks ago it was praised by Baldur’s Gate 3 game director Swen Vincke. 

“So much love went into this – amazing work!” said Vincke in a social media post, responding to the mod’s release. 

At this point if you were the mod’s creator Xun you’d have been walking around with your chest puffed out. Indeed, Xun announced that there was much more to come in subsequent updates to Baldur’s Village, including new romanceable characters from BG3. 

Then, presumably to a chorus of pantomime boos, the lawyers stepped in. The mod was hit with a DMCA takedown (essentially copyright infringement) by lawyers representing the Wizards of the Coast IP, the fantasy universe in which Baldur’s Gate 3 is set.

But there’s a happy ending to this particular fantasy saga. Wizards of the Coast have subsequently released a statement to IGN clarifying that the mod was issued a DMCA erroneously: “The Baldur’s Village DMCA takedown was issued mistakenly – we are sorry about that," the statement reads. "We are in the process of fixing that now so fans and the Stardew community can continue to enjoy this great mod!"

At the time of writing, the mod is still available on Nexus Mods. Hopefully fans can enjoy the RPG crossover project for the foreseeable.