Inside Manor Lords' impressive launch: 159k concurrent players, 7th biggest release of 2024 on Steam

Manor Lords, which was the most wishlisted upcoming game on Steam, has just launched in Early Access. It has already amassed a huge audience in just the first few hours, so let’s take a closer look at the numbers.

Released on April 26, Manor Lords is a strategy game developed by Polish solo developer Greg Styczeń and released under his aptly named studio Slavic Magic. It is currently available on Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, and PC Game Pass.

At its core, Manor Lords is a city builder set in 14th-century Europe, but with meticulous attention to detail and simulations that allow players to develop their settlements by managing resources, keeping citizens happy (and healthy!), and forming armies to conquer other territories.

The game fits perfectly in the portfolio of publisher Hooded Horse, which mainly focuses on various strategy and sim titles such as Against the Storm and the upcoming Norland.

Prior to its launch, Manor Lords collected 3.2 million wishlists, making it the most wishlisted upcoming game on Steam. And it is already safe to say that it 100% lived up to the hype.

Manor Lords’ rating hasn’t fully formed yet, as most of the early adopters are now simply playing the game. But out of the 3,526 user reviews currently displayed on Steam, 92% are positive, and the score keeps increasing.

At the time of writing this, Manor Lords has already peaked at 159,701 concurrent players (via SteamDB). This is clearly not the limit, so the game has every chance to reach new heights over the weekend.

Manor Lords already ranks 1st in peak CCU among all titles published by Hooded Horse. The closet is Against the Storm with 12.8k CCU, followed by Terra Invicta (9.8k CCU), Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic (4k CCU), and Old World (3.5k CCU).

Top 10 Hooded Horse-published games on Steam by peak concurrent players

The 159.7k peak also makes Manor Lords the 7th biggest launch of 2024, and the game will likely crack the top 5 soon. The full top 10 can be seen below:

1. Palworld — 2.1 million CCU;
2. Helldivers 2 — 458.7k CCU;
3. Last Epoch — 264.7k CCU;
4. Dragon’s Dogma 2 — 228.5 CCU;
5. Content Warning — 204.4k CCU;
6. Enshrouded — 160.4k CCU;
7. Manor Lords — 159.7k CCU;
8. Granblue Fantasy: Relink — 114k CCU;
9. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor — 56.9k CCU;
10. Supermarket Simulator — 51.3k CCU.

Manor Lords has been in development for seven years, and with the Early Access launch, that journey will continue. Given a huge hype, Styczeń has already warned players not to confuse Manor Lords with other the Total War series or grand strategy, or fast-paced RTS like Age of Empires, as his game differs from those experiences. Not to mention that many of its elements still require improvement.

Right now, the developer plans to collect player feedback and expand his game throughout the EA period. “This way I expect the first month of patches to be just bug fixes and polish,” Styczeń noted. “During that time, together with Hooded Horse, we’ll be collecting your feedback and then prioritizing work based on what we hear.”