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The developer of highly-anticipated city builder Manor Lords has no plans to reveal the price of its upcoming game until its launch later this week.
It's been a few years since we first reported on Manor Lords, and now we're just a few days away from its Early Access launch. On April 26, the city builder - which isn't an RPG, RTS, map game, or a Total War competitor - will be available via Steam, but if you head on over to the storefront now, you'll notice there's no pre-order or price displayed - and there's a few reasons for it.
As we get closer to Manor Lords' release, several members of the game's subreddit have started asking about its price. Most recently, the CEO of Manor Lords' publisher, Hooded Horse, made a post on the forum explaining a few things. "Manor Lords, like all other games on Steam, will not have one price. It will have regional prices that distribute across the world," Tim Bender writes in the subreddit.
"These aren’t just different currencies - there are large regions of the world where Steam uses US Dollar pricing but in a different way," the post continues. What the Hooded Horse CEO is talking about here is that in several countries, Steam will display the price in dollars, regardless of the currency, that won't match up with the numbers in the game's US listing - which could lead to "misunderstandings."
Manor Lords Pricing (why we are sharing at launch, and what to generally expect) from r/ManorLords
Another reason is to prevent "gray market/scam stores" from attempting to sell pre-orders for Manor Lords keys. As the CEO explains: "They don’t have any keys, and they aren’t going to be getting any from us. But they are attempting to capitalize 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."
Although the publisher isn't prepared to announce the cost of its game, Bender did say: "I don't think people should be worried about price" since Hooded Horse has never set triple-A pricing ($60 - $70) on a game and "has no current plans to do so." The CEO also said that, typically, the publisher offers an Early Access discount (10-25%), so it's not unreasonable to expect one for the Slavic Magic game.
"We're not trying to squeeze every last dollar out of people," Bender finishes. "We won't be putting up five editions with a spreadsheet needed to understand them or locking up content into Day One DLC or any of that crap. There's going to be a fair price there at launch with a fair discount."
Just can't wait for Friday? Take a look at our Manor Lords review to find out what's in store.
