Manor Lords publisher defends lack of transparent pricing, to avoid scammers
"We're not trying to squeeze every last dollar out of people."
Manor Lords releases on Steam in early access tomorrow, but pricing is still yet to be revealed.
Tim Bender, CEO of the game's publisher Hooded Horse, took to reddit to defend the decision and explain further why the pricing will only be shared at launch.
Bender explained the game will have regional pricing, just like other games on Steam, which aren't just different currencies but priced according to local standards.
As such, a price for the game won't be declared in advance of release as sharing a US price alone "will lead to misunderstandings". Said Bender: "People will be concluding the game is unaffordable in their region when at launch they will have pricing that will work for them. And whatever disclaimers we'd attach would probably be dropped when it is repeated elsewhere causing a bunch of people to lose hope and feel the game won't be affordable in their country."
A further reason is the rise in scam stores falsely selling pre-order keys of the game.
"They don't have any keys, and they aren't going to be getting any from us," said Bender. "But they are attempting to capitalise on the hype, and, despite our stance that we are NOT doing pre-orders because we don't want to take your money until after release, they are claiming to take pre-orders for key sales."
As such, these scam stores are guessing at what the price would be.
"We don't want players to get scammed or cheated by such sites, and giving them a definite price to plan around would probably just increase their proliferation and marketing of these 'pre-orders'," said Bender.
Bender also reassured players not to be worried about the price, noting the publisher has "never done AAA pricing on a game" and will not do so "no matter how popular a game is". Early access will come with a launch discount in the range of 10-25 percent for the first couple of weeks.
"We're not trying to squeeze every last dollar out of people, we won't be putting up 5 editions with a spreadsheet needed to understand them or locking up content into Day 1 DLC or any of that crap," he said. "There's going to be a fair price there at launch with a fair discount."
Manor Lords is a medieval city-building sim that's already proven incredibly popular ahead of its early access launch, with over 3m wishlists on Steam.
"There's a confidence to Manor Lords that belies its one-person development, and what's there can be spellbinding, but it's a pastoral idyll that still needs significant development," reads our Eurogamer Manor Lords early access review.