The Long Dark developer apologizes for his comments about Manor Lords’ success

Something like a minor rivalry has developed between the developers of Manor Lords and The Long Dark following the commentary of the latter’s lead developer, Raphael van Lierop. After “heat and hatred” was directed at Lierop and his team at Hinterland, he’s decided to apologize for his earlier statements.

This information comes from the comments found on the LinkedIn post of the CEO of Manor Lords‘ publishing company Hooded Horse, Tim Bender. In his post, Bender puts the remarkable success of Manor Lords in opposition to Raphael van Lierop’s comments that “Manor Lords is apparently a “case-study in the pitfalls of Early Access” because the “game has been out for 2.5 months and there have been three fairly small patches”,” as it were. Bender also explains how he warned the sole developer of Manor Lords that “he was going to hear from all sorts of commenters talking about missed opportunities because he failed to grow as fast as they wanted, and judging the game a failure by some kind of expectation they formed.”

In response to all of this, Lierop has apologized saying that he “should have found a better way to frame [his] original feedback.”

Manor Lords might not be a “case-study in the pitfalls of Early Access” after all

“I apologize to the developer, Slavic Magic, and to the publisher, Hooded Horse Inc., for any negativity this post may have brought to their work — a game I highly enjoy. I also apologize to all of you for any negativity that ended up in your timelines as a result of my poorly framed comments,” said Lierop, adding that he is not trying to “avoid accountability for [his] original words.”

According to Lierop, his team at Hinterland working on The Long Dark “is starting to be impacted by this response, and there’s no reason that should be the case.”

The Long Dark stands out as one of the few true-to-form survival games on the market right now, even though it came out from Early Access years ago, back in 2017. Though excellent in its own right, The Long Dark‘s long anticipated Wintermute campaign mode is still not completed, and the admittedly expansive Tales from the Far Territory DLC serves as a stop-gap as its development continues.

Now, Lierop isn’t wrong that Manor Lords hasn’t received a huge amount of Early Access updates since it came out in late April, most of them have been fairly chunky and meaningful. Sure, there is a dearth of content in the game right now, but the fact of the matter is that most players are happy with the current state of the game, and since it’s not a live-service treadmill as Tim Bender points out, concurrent player counts don’t matter all that much.