Manor Lords Publisher Hits Back at Claims It Should Have 'Better Prepared' to Provide More Post-Launch Content

ign.com:

The publisher of Steam hit medieval city builder Manor Lords has hit back at claims it has become the latest Early Access game to fail to provide players with enough content to keep them interested and therefore has suffered a significant drop-off.

In a post on Linkedin, publisher Hooded Horse boss Tim Bender took issue with another Linkedin post from a video game developer that 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) hits the reality of a hungry audience.”

“As a result of the lack of updates, the concurrent users have plummeted since launch (which isn't that unusual — it's the current trend for a lot of Early Access titles that blow up these days),” the post continued.

“But given the huge number of wishlists and hype around it leading up to launch, this is something the developer and publisher should have been better prepared for, in my opinion.

“Early Access is a marathon, and when you launch you need to have your next major content expansion pretty much 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.

“As such, I've put the game aside and don't expect to look at it again for another six months, at which point I'll probably be focused on playing something else. It's really hard to get people's attention back once you've lost it.”

Bender responded directly to this post by calling it “exactly the kind of distorted endless growth/burden of expectations/line must go up perspective that causes so much trouble in the games industry.”

Bender said Manor Lords sold 250,000 copies in the last month after selling over two million copies in its first three weeks, and pointed to its ‘very positive’ Steam user review rating of 88% and its median playtime of eight hours and 48 minutes per player.

“Players are happy, the developer is happy, and we as publisher are thrilled beyond belief,”