You’ll feel like applauding this LinkedIn post from Manor Lords’ publisher
The publisher of Manor Lords, the hit medieval city-building game made by solo developer Slavic Magic, has hit out at critics of the game’s gentle update schedule since launch: “This is exactly the kind of distorted endless growth/burden of expectations/line must go up perspective that causes so much trouble in the games industry,” Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender said on LinkedIn.
Bender was responding to another LinkedIn post by Raphael van Lierop, CEO of Hinterland Studio (the developer of The Long Dark, a Steam hit that had an Early Access release in 2014). In his original post, van Lierop said Manor Lords is “a pretty interesting case study in the pitfalls of Early Access development.”
Van Lierop said that, while high quality, Manor Lords is lacking in content, and due to the size of the development team (which is essentially one person), the pace of updates to the game is slow. He noted that the number of concurrent players of Manor Lords had dropped quickly since launch and wrote, “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.” He advised Early Access developers to have a plan to release “2-3 major updates with new content and features” within three months of releasing the game.
Bender’s passionate response to van Lierop’s criticism is worth reading in full:
This is exactly the kind of distorted endless growth/burden of expectations/line must go up perspective that causes so much trouble in the games industry.
Manor Lords just sold 250,000 copies in the last month — after selling over 2 million copies in its first 3 weeks — and has a Very Positive review rating of 88% with a median playtime of 8 hours 48 minutes per player (very long for any game, especially a recently released one). Players are happy, the developer is happy, and we as publisher are thrilled beyond belief.
And yet here we are — Manor Lords is apparently a “case-study in the pitfalls of
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