I think that no matter when Hollow Knight: Silksong released, it was going to ruffle some feathers. Not because of any of that difficulty discourse you’ve probably seen on your timeline since its release, we’re done with that, I’m talking about its literal release date, September 4th. You probably saw several games delay themselves out of its window to be in with a fighting chance in this current media hellscape we have. But there was one notable release that stuck with its date, and that’s Hell Is Us, which came out, oh dear, September 4th. And the game’s creative director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, understandably has some feelings about that.
Jacques-Belletête recently made an appearance on Skill Up’s Friends Per Second podcast where he spoke about what it was like launching on the same days as Silksong. Here’s what he had to say: “When you know you’re that big, I think a shadow drop is a bit like, wow.” He continued, “As the ‘GTA 6 of indie’… to shadow drop something like this is a little callous.”
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To be fair to Jacques-Belletête, he did also acknowledge that Team Cherry can do as they like, and ultimately Hell Is Us developer Rogue Factor decided to stick with their release date. “We’re still much bigger than some of the smaller ones who would have gotten a lot more affected and who decided to change their dates – changing the date of Hell Is Us would have been a pretty big endeavour,” the developer said.”
A big part of why they didn’t change the date – which was announced way back in February, by the way – was because it would have meant refunding pre-orders, and with Silksong’s release date having been announced only two weeks beforehand, it was just too close to build those numbers up again. Jacques-Belletête also said that at the end of it all, he’s “happy” that they didn’t move it.
So we come back to this question: was it unfair of Team Cherry to announce Silksong’s release date with only two weeks’ notice? For Hell Is Us, maybe, Jacques-Belletête did claim it had an impact on sales. But had it been with a month’s notice, or as a shadowdrop, that still affects someone.
Maybe Rockstar had it right by locking in a release date a full year in advance! Maybe that’s what Team Cherry should have done. There are just too many games to cover, and no where near enough time, hands, or a secret third thing you can probably figure out for yourself.
