Manor Lords' publisher has defended the strategy game over a post that it thinks espouses an "endless growth" perspective "that causes so much trouble in the games industry."
Earlier this year, Manor Lords released into early access, and it did so very successfully, racking up two million copies sold in its first three weeks. But, like many early access games, buzz around it has died down a bit, in part because big updates haven't been released too frequently since its release. A post from The Long Dark developer Hinterland's CEO Raphael van Lierop appeared to criticise this very point on LinkedIn, saying that while they "really love what is here" there's "very little to it" and that it's a "pretty interesting case-study in the pitfalls of Early Access development."
Lierop continued, "It launched with a pretty strong base game but without much content. A heavily systems-centric game needs either a range of maps, game modes, or some amount of proc-gen dynamism to keep it fresh.