The publisher behind Manor Lords comments on the price of the game.
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We're not trying to squeeze every single dollar out of you.
With these words, Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender addresses the community of the building game Manor Lords, which goes into early access on April 26, 2024. Previously, the fan community was often irritated because, although the game will soon be available for purchase, no price is yet known.
Some suspected it was a nasty surprise, but like the CEO explained on Reddit, it supposedly has a rather opposite reason. In a detailed article, Bender explains the reasons behind the decision and provides some insights into how the rather small publisher feels about pricing in the gaming industry.
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Manor Lords is a medieval dream that isn't over yet – with stone walls
Two reasons for secret price
In detail, there are even two reasons why Manor Lords doesn't have a price tag yet.
Firstly, it is about not causing concern among potential buyers around the world. According to Bender, Manor Lords will cost differently in each country – depending on whether the amount seems appropriate for the salaries paid there. However, many countries outside the USA also use US dollars on Steam instead of their own currency. Here the dollar price is then reduced accordingly.
This should help make games affordable depending on the economic situation in the respective countries. The fear is that the announcement of a US price could cause confusion online. People from other countries might then believe that the game is too expensive for them if the dollar price for the USA comes into circulation in the first place.
Just sharing the US price would lead to misunderstandings. People would infer that the game is unaffordable in their region, even though we have pricing that works for them at launch. And no matter what disclaimer we attach, it would probably be ignored and many people might lose hope because they think it is not affordable in their country.
The second reason has to do with the increasing growth of gray markets that sell keys whose origins are questionable. According to Bender, there are already fraudulent stores that offer pre-order keys for Manor Lords, even though they don't yet have these keys and are not officially supposed to get them. As a matter of principle, Hooded Horse does not rely on pre-orders and does not want to ask people to pay before they can get the game.
According to Hooded Horse, the prices in these key stores are completely guesswork, as no official price is yet known. If Hooded Horse told them a real price, they would have an easier time ripping off interested fans.
Do not worry
The CEO of Hooded Horse then wants to allay people's concerns that the game might be more expensive than other games from the publisher – especially since there is so much hype about it. According to Bender, however, they have never charged the same prices as triple-A publishers and have no plans to do so at Manor Lords either.
Rather, he suggests that there will probably be an early access discount between 10 and 25 percent lies. You don't want to deprive people of their money. Finally, Bender takes aim at some common monetization practices in the industry.
There won't be five editions that you need a spreadsheet to understand and we're not hiding content behind Day 1 DLC or any of that crap. There will be a fair price at launch, with a fair discount.
As a rule, the prices of Hooded Horse games in Germany are between 30 and 40 euros.