Manor Lords publisher defends lack of transparent pricing, to avoid scammers
Manor Lords releases on Steam in early entry tomorrow, however pricing remains to be but to be revealed.
Tim Bender, CEO of the sport’s publisher Hooded Horse, took to reddit to defend the choice and clarify additional why the pricing will solely be shared at launch.
Bender defined the sport may have regional pricing, identical to different video games on Steam, which are not simply totally different currencies however priced in accordance to native requirements.
As such, a value for the sport will not be declared upfront of launch as sharing a US value 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.”
An additional motive is the rise in rip-off shops falsely promoting pre-order keys of the sport.
“They don’t have any keys, and they aren’t going to be getting any from us,” stated 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 rip-off shops are guessing at what the value could 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’,” stated Bender.
Bender additionally reassured gamers not to be frightened concerning the value, noting the publisher has “never done AAA pricing on a game” and won’t accomplish that “no matter how popular a game is”. Early entry will include a launch low cost within the vary of 10-25 % for the primary 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 stated. “There’s going to be a fair price there at launch with a fair discount.”
Manor Lords is a medieval city-building sim that is already confirmed extremely fashionable forward of its early entry 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 entry overview.
