Manor Lords brings its in-depth medieval city-building 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 purchasing Manor Lords will actually cost. Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender explained why fans were left waiting a post on Reddit. Explain that the problem is a matter of managing expectations.
“Manor Lords, like all other games on Steam, will not have a single price,” he says. “It will have regional pricing that will be distributed around the world. These aren’t just different currencies – there are large regions of the world where Steam uses US dollar pricing, but differently.”
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 prices in US dollars but different from those from the United States in to provide help to local customers so that they can afford the game given the prices and wages in their country (although inflation is making this increasingly difficult when it is not possible to use the local currency). ”
Hooded Horse says these examples are why it wants to move away from announcing pricing before launch. If US pricing is announced before Manor Lords launches, players in other territories may worry they won’t be able to afford it. The company fears that too many potential buyers will “lose hope and think the game won’t be affordable in their country” even if it attaches disclaimers to a pricing announcement.
However, this is just one of a few major concerns that Hooded Horse has tied to pre-release pricing announcements. Bender also references the company’s fear of scammers who might try to take advantage of eager fans who want to pre-order Manor Lords.
“They don’t have keys and they won’t get any from us,” he says. “But they are attempting to capitalize on the hype, and despite our stance that we are NOT taking pre-orders because we don’t want to take your money until after release, they claim to be accepting pre-orders for key sales. They have no idea what the price will be, so they make their wild guesses and probably figure they can get a key through questionable means later (or they just let the customer not get what they paid for except maybe). We don’t want players to be scammed or cheated by such sites, and giving them a defined price to plan on would likely only increase their proliferation and commercialization 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 pricing for a game” and has no plans to start. Bender also recalls that in the past he has offered launch discounts ranging from 10 to 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 understand them or lock content into day one DLC or anything like that,” Bender adds. “There will be a fair price at launch with a fair discount.”
Manor Lords is the highly anticipated medieval city management game from Slavic Magic. Despite what many had begun to believe, it’s not an RPG or a Total War competitor but instead a strategic 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 gorgeous medieval town builder that has kept me busy for hours building my perfect, cozy villages, but it definitely feels very early in its Early Access development.”
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor to IGN. He began writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
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