Manor Lord Publisher: “Not Every Game Should Be Live-Service”

Manor Lords was the most wishlisted game on Steam for a long time, so naturally, expectations were high despite the small size of the team developing it. Still, it left most people satisfied, considering its Very Positive reviews and around 10,000 concurrent players every day. This number, of course, can’t be compared to the peak of 173,178 fans, but what game can keep up with its initial success?

While it could be said that any title is bound to be dropped after a while, Raphael van Lierop, the CEO of Hinterland (The Long Dark), thinks the hype could have been prolonged. On LinkedIn, he called Manor Lords “a pretty interesting case-study in the pitfalls of Early Access development when a game with a small team … hits the reality of a hungry audience.”

He criticized its lack of content and major updates, saying the developer and publisher should have been better prepared for the concurrent player numbers’ fall.