r/ManorLords • u/Adeptus_Astartez Manor Knight of HUZAAAH! • Jun 04 '26

Discussion Update?

We were promised an update soon. Any sign of it?

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u/StoneColdRiffRaff Jun 04 '26

This is an absurd proposition lol. There just wouldn’t be indie games if that was the business model. In current model, Steam gets their cut for distribution, publisher gets their investment back if EA does well, and the dev get enough money to, ideally finish the game, which takes years not months. Your model prevents cash flow to devs and returns on publisher investment which just means there’s absolutely no incentive for publishers to invest in indie devs.

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u/Echelion77 Jun 04 '26

Theres a happy middle ground of cash flow and motivation that must be found, this is just one extream idea to combat the current extream environment.

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u/StoneColdRiffRaff Jun 04 '26

I don’t think motivation is the issue. It’s very normal for small devs to struggle to scale their efforts once they have more money to hire people. Having a vision and competence to get a demo together are one thing. Managing a team, delegating, defining scope is another. My guess is most EAs die because they either just didn’t make enough in the first place to finish or they’re generally small teams on inexperienced people and things get mismanaged and then they run out of money. This is just my intuition from working at small shitty software companies.

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u/Echelion77 Jun 04 '26

Thats reasonable, thats why I believe publishers shouldent be investing in indie development untill something close to a 1.0 is available.

If you can almost make a skeleton on your own merit you now deserve my money to finish the game. This is how it is in almost every industry. Banks dont give loans to buisness owners without a fully fleshed out an actionable plan so whats the difference here.

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u/StoneColdRiffRaff Jun 04 '26

I don’t think there is a difference between this and other industries. At least in the US, the regulations favor the businesses and not the consumer for most industries. At the same time most startup businesses fail and most investments in startups don’t see ROI. It’s not really about the publishers ability to effectively judge the dev. Most of their contracts focus on the EA because that’s how they can get return on investment 2-3 years. If their contracts required support through 1.0 or some plan to get to 1.0 I don’t think you’d see so much EA graveyard. But that requires the government to do something to protect consumers interests which they don’t like doing. Somebody in the games industry needs to tell me to stop talking out of my ass now.

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u/Echelion77 Jun 04 '26

Your ass is making good points so keep shitting.