We are not even through the launch weekend; and Manor Lords, a city-building strategy game from Hooded Horse has crossed the magical 1 million sold copies mark. The game was shaping up to be a hit with almost 3 million players wishlisting the game on Steam before launch.
The publisher posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the game had reached 170k active concurrent players on Steam – which is the highest ever for the genre
The scale of anticipation and the launch nos. are particularly notable for the fact that the game was started as a solo project by developer Greg Styczen . Manor Lords was released as early access on Steam – with plans to remain in this mode for a year till a full scale launch. The game is available on PC Game Pass currently; and will be made available on Xbox Game Pass when it eventually releases on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.
Update: Manor Lords continued it’s winning streak, crossing 2 million units sold within a month of launch in early access, and then crossed 3 million units sold by Feb of 2025.
The game currently sits at an impressive 83.04% rating on SteamDB after a solid 91K reviews at the time of updating this article. Along with this reception from the gaming community in general, the game also got nominated for Best Debut Indie Game and Best Early Access Game at The Game Awards 2024 and the Golden Joystick Awards 2024 respectively.
Since launching in EA, Manor Lords has also rolled out several updates, with the more recent ones being Major Updates #5 in Dec 25, #6 in Mar26, #7 in Jul26, and #8 being the most recent one in Aug26. These updates covered a wide range of issues, fixes and improvements – from castle overhauls to advanced construction and several others; and the long period of being in EA is sure to help the cause – like it did for Palworld, and Hades 2, for example.
Though the full release date for Manor Lords has not yet been confirmed, the game has managed to keep a steady number of players, with anywhere between 7k – 8k active concurrent players on Steam. While this is a far cry from the peak of 173k players during its launch in Early Access, for an indie game that is still working towards a full release, there can be far worse numbers than this.
