Independent (indie) developer Team Cherry dropped an atomic bomb on the gaming industry a week ago. The long awaited (2019) sequel to Hollow Knight has a confirmed launch: September 4th. This was a highly unexpected move that took quite a lot of people off guard. In fact, many fans had given up hope of Silksong ever releasing because the delays have been so extensive and disappointing. An announcement like this a mere 2 weeks in advance has everyone buzzing.
In addition to the players freaking out, so are other game developers. It seems as though half of all games indie games that were scheduled to launch around this time have rescheduled, and for good reason: they'd get completely drowned out by the hype of Silksong. Many of them have gone out of their way to make memes and even videos to that effect on top of the cancelations and pushbacks.
"guess why lol"
-- personal favorite
How much of a difference moving away from Silksong will really make is a matter of debate, and it's possible that some games are using it as cover for delays that are primarily driven by other considerations. But Silksong is the current king of Steam's most wishlisted chart—beating out games like Borderlands 4 and Battlefield 6—so it's understandable that pretty much every other unreleased PC game in proximity might want to take a little pause.
'We would not be doing our game any favors by wading into waters we can clearly see are blood red'
"Silksong is the most anticipated and wishlisted game on all of Steam and we think people will love this game and play it right at launch (including us) but that also means it will overshadow all games launching close to it,"
"I wonder what my wishlist looks like... oh..."
"Dropping the GTA of indies with 2 weeks notice makes everyone freak [out]," the developer added.
Launching a metroidvania demo when every streamer and fan is going to be busy with what is probably the biggest metroidvania launch genre this decade has seen would basically be throwing away that marketing beat. It could spell doom for the Kickstarter. ... It's a little sad having to delay this demo I'd been looking forward to getting into people's hands, but the second I saw what the release date was it was a no-brainer for me."
'I feel like a little krill trying to not get eaten by a blue whale,' wrote one developer
It comes with just two weeks of advance notice. Already, no less than five games have shifted their planned release dates out of next week, some by months. I really only have just one question: What the hell, you guys?
Can't say I agree with the idea that Team Cherry owed anyone notice with their own launch date. In fact I think everyone should strive to do exactly what has been done here. Stop trying to hype up your product for years only to disappoint and frustrate your user base over and over again. Soon™ is the absolute worst way to market a game, and almost every single company in the business does it. Team Cherry did not and I respect that.
For me personally this was the best possible outcome. I didn't start playing Hollow Knight until late 2023 and the game launched in early 2017. I had absolutely no expectations for Silksong and didn't have to wait at all for it because of this last minute announcement. Pretty awesome if you ask me.
When asked why the game was delayed so long: Team Cherry gave a pretty funny response in my opinion. Of course this is paraphrasing and they were much more elegant than I, but what it really came down to is that Hollow Knight was such a smashing success they no longer had to worry about reaching deadlines or cranking out a product for funding. Unlike almost every other studio out there they did not feel the squeeze, and so they took their time and made the game correctly rather than rushing out buggy garbage. It's a refreshing story to be honest, unlike the "crunch time" vibes of every other launch.
So many games moved their launch date this reddit post gained some popularity in which Silksong has been delayed because of the launch of Silksong. Classic.
Interestingly enough one of the only videos I've ever posted was one of my better speedrun times for Hollow Knight. Every once and a while I get the itch to go back and improve it but I haven't done so yet, and would be pretty rusty if I did, but I know I can still easily shave a few minutes off of my best time. Then again any time under 50 minutes is impressive in my book so maybe I'll just let it lie.
Who's ready for Silksong?
Countdown T minus 5 days.
