Manor Lords breaks a Steam city-builder and strategy game record, beating Civilization 6 and Cities: Skylines as it sells 1 million copies just one day after release

(Image credit: Slavic Magic)

City-builder sensation Manor Lords has broken genre records on Steam, selling more than one million copies a little over a day after launch.

Released yesterday, Manor Lords resided at the top of Steam’s wishlist charts for several weeks ahead of launch, amassing three million prospective players. Now, it seems like a large number of those have converted, as publisher Hooded Horse announced on Twitter that “Manor Lords has already sold over 1 million copies.”

Since yesterday’s launch Manor Lords has already sold over 1 million copies & hit a peak Steam concurrent player count of 170k – highest ever for a city builder (or for other different genres like GSG/4x/colony sim). Congrats @LordsManor, we’re honored to serve as your publisher! pic.twitter.com/559uGRp1NOApril 27, 2024

If that weren’t enough, the publisher claims that the game’s peak concurrent count of 170,000 players is the “highest ever for a city builder.” That record even appears to extend to grand strategy, 4X, and colony sims. A quick glance at Steam Charts does seem to back Hooded Horse up – the Cities Skylines franchise tops out at around 75,000 concurrents, while Civilization 6 sits at 162,000. Obviously, there are a lot of games that could have beat that record within the entire strategy pantheon, but those are certainly some of the bigger examples.

It does look as though Manor Lords has gotten off to a pretty smooth start. Reviews have been positive, player counts extremely good, and while the game’s solo dev has had to step in once or twice for some last-minute nerfs (to archers and sheep farming, if you were wondering), it’s not hard for ‘the next big thing’ to fizzle out a little. It’s gratifying that after all the hype attached to Manor Lords, it does seem to be living up to it.

Steam’s most-anticipated city-builder was set to make millions, but for Manor Lords’ CEO, “I don’t think the money weighs that heavily.”

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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.