The publisher of Steam’s hit medieval city-building game Manor Lords has responded to allegations that it has become the latest Early Access game to fail to provide players with enough content to keep them interested and has suffered a significant drop as a result.
In a Linkedin post, Hood Horse CEO Tim Bender criticized another Linkedin post from a video game developer who called Manor Lords “a pretty interesting case study in the pitfalls of early access development when a game with a small team (and heavily marketed as such) meets the reality of a hungry audience.”
“Due to the lack of updates, concurrent users have plummeted since launch (which isn’t that unusual – it’s the current trend for many Early Access titles that are exploding these days),” the post continues.
“But given the sheer number of wishlists and hype surrounding it leading up to launch, it’s something the developer and publisher should have been better prepared for, in my opinion.
“Early Access is a marathon, and when you launch it, you have to have your next major content expansion in the queue. The game has been out for 2.5 months and there have been three fairly small patches with no new features or content.
“So I’ve put the game aside and I don’t plan on coming back to it for six months, after which I’ll probably focus on something else. It’s really hard to get people’s attention back once you’ve lost it.”
Bender responded directly to this post, calling it “exactly the kind of warped perspective of endless growth/burden of expectations/line-that-must-climb that causes so many problems in the video game industry.”
Bender said Manor Lords had sold 250,000 copies in the past month after selling more than two million copies in its first three weeks, and highlighted its “very positive” Steam user review score of 88% and its median playtime of eight hours and 48 minutes per player.
“The players are happy, the developer is happy, and we as a publisher are thrilled beyond belief,” Bender said. “And yet here we are – Manor Lords is apparently a “case study in the pitfalls of Early Access” as “the game has been out for 2.5 months and there have been three fairly small patches” (one of the patch notes referred to as “small” here is over 3,000 words and over 10 single-spaced pages) leading to “a drop in concurrent users since launch” (yes, we didn’t sustain the peak of 173,000 concurrent players) and the seemingly grim reality that some people, having enjoyed their purchase of a premium single-player title, may decide to move on and play another game (the horror! The horror!).”
Solo developer Greg Styczeń, aka Slavic Magic, launched Manor Lords on Steam for $39.99 and directly on PC Game Pass in Early Access on April 26. Manor Lords Early Access Review We gave it a 7/10 rating. We said: “Manor Lords is a beautiful medieval city-building game that kept me busy for hours building my perfect, comfortable hamlets, but it feels very early in its Early Access development.”
Manor Lords hit its impressive concurrent player record on Steam two months ago, and now has 10,671 concurrent players in the last 24 hours. It’s not enough to crack the top 100 most-played games on Steam, but it’s not far off.
Bender said that before Manor Lords’ release, he told Styczeń to expect “all sorts of commentators talking about missed opportunities because it didn’t manage to grow as fast as they wanted, and judging the game as a failure because of some kind of expectation they had formed.”
“I told him to ignore all of that, focus on his core vision for the game, and keep in mind that the road to Early Access is long and he shouldn’t feel pressure from other people’s expectations, both for his own health and stress levels in the years to come, and to preserve the calm and peaceful state of mind that supports his creative vision.
“If the industry is to find a more sustainable path, we need to move away from the approaches outlined below. Success should not create new expectations of growth. Not every game should be aimed at becoming a boom-or-bust online game. And a release should not be the start of an ever-faster development cycle that developers are forced to race on until their mental or physical health collapses.”
Bender’s comment was praised by Pocketpair community leader Bucky, who called it a “fantastic response.” Pocketpair’s controversial “Pokémon with weapons” survival and crafting game Palworld has itself been accused of becoming a “dead game” after the maximum concurrent players on Steam dropped dramatically following the game’s record-breaking launch earlier this year. Palworld, incidentally, is currently the 14th most-played game on Steam with 110,182 concurrent players in the last 24 hours following the Sakurajima update in June 2024.
Tim Bender, CEO of Hoody Horse, had a fantastic response to someone who said, “Manor Lords is a pretty interesting case study in the pitfalls of early access.”
I didn’t think Hood Horse could get any cooler, but here it is 👑 pic.twitter.com/Rrff3UrIww
— Bucky 🔜 BitSummit | Palworld (@Bucky_cm) July 7, 2024
The term “dead game” is often used to describe games that have seen their player counts drop, but it’s also often used without context or understanding of a developer’s or publisher’s criteria for success. Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2, for example, has been called a “dead game” in recent weeks because its player count on Steam is nowhere near what it was in the months following its release, but it sold well enough to become the best-selling PlayStation game of all time.
While the burden of “live game growth” is one that must be shouldered by all publishers and developers who dare to enter this most crowded and competitive market, when it comes to premium single-player Early Access games created by a small team, perhaps, as Bender suggests, a new way of thinking is needed.
Wesley is IGN’s UK News Editor. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or in confidence at wyp100@proton.me.