Manor Lords brings its deep medieval city-builder to early access in just two days, so publisher Hooded Horse took the time to explain why it hasn’t announced pricing information yet.
While many players would expect to see some sort of update by now, it’s still unclear how much Manor Lords will actually cost to purchase. Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender explained why fans have been left waiting a Reddit post. He explains that the issue is one of managing expectations.
“Manor Lords, like all other games on Steam, will not have a price,” he says. “There will be regional awards that are distributed throughout the world. These aren’t just different currencies – there are large regions of the world where Steam uses US dollar pricing, but in a different way.”
He continues: “For example, parts of Southeast Asia, many CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) regions, Turkey, many Middle Eastern countries, Argentina, many South American countries… all have US dollar prices, but different from the US in order to help domestic customers be able to afford the game given their home country’s prices and wages (although inflation is making it increasingly difficult when local currency cannot be used).
Hooded Horse says these examples are why it wants to move away from announcing the price before it hits the market. If the US price was announced before Manor Lords launched, players in other territories might fear they wouldn’t be able to afford it. The company worries that many potential buyers would “lose hope and feel that the game would not be affordable in their country” even if it attached disclaimers to a price announcement.
However, this is just one of several major concerns that Hooded Horse has related to pre-release pricing announcements. Bender also refers to the company’s fear of scammers who might try to take advantage of excited fans who want to pre-order Manor Lords.
“They don’t have any keys and they won’t take any from us,” he says. “But they’re trying to capitalize on the hype and, despite our stance that we’re NOT taking pre-orders because we don’t want to take your money until after release, they’re claiming to take pre-orders for major sales. They have no idea what the price will be, so they’re taking their own wild guesses and maybe thinking they can get a key by some dubious means later (or just let the customer not get what they have paid if not maybe). We don’t want players to be cheated or cheated by such sites, and giving a certain price to plan would probably just increase their proliferation and marketing of these ‘pre-orders’.”
Hooded Horse doesn’t want Manor Lords players to worry about what the price will be, as the post explains that it has “never done AAA prices in a game” and has no plans to start. Additionally, Bender recalls that, in the past, it has offered launch discounts ranging from 10-25% for the first few weeks.
“We’re not trying to squeeze every last dollar out of people, we’re not going to release 5 editions with a spreadsheet needed to figure them out or lock content into Day 1 DLC or any of that crap,” it adds Bender. “There will be a fair price there at the beginning with a fair discount.”
Manor Lords is Slavic Magic’s highly anticipated medieval city management game. Despite what many had come to believe, it’s not an RPG or a Total War competitor but instead, a strategy-based city-building experience that aims to give fans an immersive world to play in. we reviewed the early access build and gave it a 7/10, saying, “Manor Lords is a wonderful medieval town builder that kept me busy for hours building my perfect and cozy villages, but it definitely feels very early in development. of Early Access”.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor to IGN. He started writing about the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets like The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
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