Manor Lords Dev Can’t Just Go On Hiring Spree To Increase Updates

Don’t count on the development team behind Manor Lords ballooning into a big operation, no matter how much fans ask for more content. For starters, one person was in charge of the medieval strategy game–Greg Styczeń. On top of that, publisher Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender noted “that’s just fundamentally not the way things work.”

Bender opened up to PC Gamer about how fans are already asking for “faster updates” for Manor Lords, which put up huge numbers on Steam when it launched late last month. That led to someone chiming in that the developer should just add more workers. But that won’t happen, according to Bender.

“The best growth is very slow,” Bender said. “It’s keeping the core vision intact. It’s the importance of Greg and his work process. And so, as a result, people are going to be clamoring [for updates], and I think that’s just virtually guaranteed. There’s no pace of updates that would not result in people clamoring for more, and would not result in a bunch of people saying the ideal solution is to just hire 50 people.”

Manor Lords had over 150,000 concurrent players near the end of April, with a peak today of more than 77,000 people on Steam at the time of publication. It’s been another surprise hit for this year, joining the likes of Palworld, Balatro, and even Helldivers 2. The city-builder game will come to Xbox eventually, but it’s not confirmed for PlayStation yet. Manor Lords also launched day and date on Xbox Game Pass for PC (Game Preview).

For more, check out 14 things to know before playing Manor Lords, or if you’ve already started building and battling, venture over to GameSpot’s Manor Lords guides hub.