Strong Steam Launches of Manor Lords, Rotwood, Dead Island 2, Rusty's Retirement and Oddsparks

Manor Lords had the best launch ever for a city builder on Steam, but Rotwood and Rusty's Retirement also had strong CCU peaks. Dead Island 2 by Plaion reached over 12,000 concurrent players with its Steam release. Oddsparks by Massive Miniteam and HandyGames achieved the second highest CCU peak for the German publisher.

Last week saw the release of a number of game highlights on Steam, with several titles from Germany also achieving four-figure CCU figures. However, the biggest launch by far was Manor Lords from solo developer Slavic Magic and publisher Hooded Horse. The Early Access game, which was on over 3.2 million wishlists, sold over a million copies over the weekend and reached over 170,000 concurrent players. The CCU peak is comparable to the launch of Keen Games' Enshrouded, although this multiplayer co-op survival game is set in a completely different genre to medieval city-building. According to Hooded Horse, it was the highest CCU peak ever for a city builder, as well as for other strategy genres such as Grand Strategy, 4X and Colony Simulations on Steam, beating all Paradox Interactive titles including Cities Skylines II. It is also the sixth successful launch of a new game this year. However, the number of players is likely to be slightly higher as Manor Lords is included in the PC Game Pass and sold on GOG.com and the Epic Games Store as well.

Hooded Horse did not reveal the price of the game, which is just under 40 Euros with a 25 per cent launch discount, until the game's release. Tim Bender, CEO of Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse, explained the reasoning on Reddit. "Because sharing the US price alone will lead to misunderstandings. People will be concluding the game is unaffordable in their region when at launch they will have pricing that will work for them. And whatever disclaimers we’d attach would probably be dropped when it is repeated elsewhere causing a bunch of people to lose hope and feel the game won't be affordable in their country," he wrotes. This meant that there was no way to pre-order the game before release. Bender talks about the rise of gray market/scam stores attempting to sell pre-orders. "They don't have any keys, and they aren't going to be getting any from us. But they are attempting to capitalize on the hype, and, despite our stance that we are NOT doing pre-orders because we don’t want to take your money until after release, they are claiming to take pre-orders for key sales. They have no idea what the price will be, so they are taking their wild guesses and probably figuring they can get a key through some questionable means later (...)"

Four other games reached five-figure CCU peaks. These include the co-operative dungeon crawler Rotwood by Klei Entertainment from Canada, which has already sold over 200,000 copies, with a CCU peak of 26,371 at a price of just under ten euros. It is the second highest CCU peak for Klei Entertainment, behind Don't Starve Together, but ahead of Oxygen Not Included. What is striking, however, is that Rotwood has received a surprisingly high number of negative reviews from players in China, while user feedback from almost all other countries has been much more positive. The most unusual release of the last week is probably Rusty's Retirement from Mister Morris Games: "A relaxing idle-farming simulator that sits at the bottom of your screen while you do other things." It reached almost 15,000 concurrent users.

Bellwright, from Donkey Crew and Snail Games USA, launched in Early Access on Tuesday with a CCU peak of 3,727 and saw that figure rise to 13,709 on Sunday. This puts the medieval survival adventure ahead of Dead Island 2, which was released on Steam on 22 April after being released on the Epic Games Store a year ago. The game from Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver (Plaion) has reached 12,094 CCU on Steam. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes from Rabbit & Bear Studios and 505 Games has reached 8,466 CCU.

Massive Miniteam from Cologne and HandyGames from Giebelstadt sent Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure last week into Early Access. The genre mix reached a CCU peak of 1,665 on Sunday, making it the publisher's second most successful game after CCU behind Little Big Workshop and ahead of We Are Football 2024.

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