Manor Lords dev adds new feature to prevent “infinite money” cheese

Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

Manor Lords, the most-wishlisted game on Steam, is launching into Early Access on April 26, 2024, but press and content creators can already play the game in order to gather information, so there are plenty of playthroughs and other videos about the title on the internet – and many tried to gather attention by advertising an “infinite money” strategy.

Slavic Magic, the one-man studio behind the strategy game, apparently saw one too many of those video titles and decided to make a last-minute change to the game: “Personally I don't have a game design problem with ‘infinite money’ (as some clickbaity videos say),” he began.

“Yes, sheep make infinite wool, and ‘trade only’ towns were part of the design. But I think the export abuse feedback came in so often that I decided to yolo a last minute feature.”

So far, players could sell as many resources or goods on the market as they wished without prices ever changing – essentially, the game didn’t follow the laws of the market. That meant players could specialize a town with sheep pastures, which generate a lot of wool consistently, and sell it at an unchanging price.

Now, the laws of the market will punish such behavior: If players flood the market with a certain good, its price will drop significantly and they may not be able to export it at all anymore. Thanks, YouTubers. There go my own plans for a guide on how to make infinite money in Manor Lords. 

Manor Lords now follows the laws of the market. / Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

Jokes aside, Slavic Magic added that this feature will give him some great opportunities later on: “What is cool about this feature potentially is in the future we can have random events impacting prices and stuff like that.”

“I was thinking more like.. flooded or snowed roads, some off-map conflict driving demand, stuff that makes trade more or less expensive,” he brainstormed.

The developer is very transparent about his ideas for the future of the game, but emphasizes that time is the limiting factor – being a solo studio, he has flexibility and freedom on his side, but things may take a while.

Check out our own Manor Lords impressions ahead of Early Access, if you’d like to know more.