What changed? Well, it is a typical example of customer price sensitivity. They haven't announced a final price for Manor Lords, but it is rumored to be somewhere in the $30 - $40 range. And when I said I wouldn't play it, I meant that I had looked into the game, and decided that at this point in time it isn't worth $30 - $40 to me. So I won't buy it on Steam.

What I had totally missed was that Manor Lords is going to be available on the PC Game Pass from day one. Which I am subscribed to already. So while Manor Lords isn't technically "free", I will be able to download and play it on the 26th at no additional cost to me. That changes the situation. My main worries about Manor Lords are that the game is far from being finished, and I doubt it already has a lot of replayability when considering the large missing elements. I still consider it likely that I'll play Manor Lords once, and then leave it be until the game is finished, which might be years from now. But while playing it once for $30 didn't look like a winning proposition, playing the early access for free seems a lot better. Even if the game is taken out of the PC Game Pass library later, before it is finished, I'll have a much better feeling whether I'd want to buy it later. It's like playing the free Millennia demo at Steam Next Fest, which ultimately convinced me to buy the game, flawed as it still is.