Indie Devs Are Delaying Their Games Because Of Silksong [Update]

Hollow Knight: Silksong announced a surprise release date of September 4 on Thursday. Alongside fans rushing to clear their schedules and games writers who have to plan around a lack of review code, some indie developers are delaying their games in response.

Panik Arcade, developers of slot machine roguelike CloverPit, announced Friday that they’re moving the game’s planned release date from September 3 to September 26. In a blog on Steam titled “We have to delay CloverPit a bit (Silksong lol),” they wrote

Some of you might already have guessed the reason for the delay: Hollow Knight: Silksong.

The release date for Silksong was announced yesterday, and it’s only one day after CloverPit our original launch date [sic]. 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. So if we stick to our original date we would risk the launch of CloverPit a fair bit.

We poured our hearts into our little game so of course we want to give it the best possible shot.

PanikArcade wrote that they plan to use the delay to further polish the game.

Another indie developer, Frogteam Games, announced Thursday afternoon shortly after the Silksong reveal that they were delaying the demo of their metroidvania Stomp and the Sword of Miracles from August 29 to an unspecified date. Frogteam wrote that they had been planning to launch a Kickstarter for the game on September 12, “with the demo giving it a little boost beforehand,” but that they now “need to delay the demo for the sake of Stomp's development. I want to give the demo room to shine, and I want to do what I can to make sure the Kickstarter is a success.” They also cited Silksong in their statement, writing

Team Cherry has suddenly announced that Hollow Knight: Silksong, the most highly anticipated metroidvania I've ever seen, is going to release on September 4th.

Trying to market an indie game is already really, really hard. It's the task of trying to get attention in a deep sea of other amazing games. In the case of Silksong, however, I feel like a little krill trying to not get eaten by a blue whale. Tiny devs like me rely on word of mouth and streamers to bring in visibility, and everyone's gonna be busy with Silksong for quite a while!

"Releasing a demo is an important marketing beat, especially when leading up to something like a Kickstarter," Frogteam told Aftermath. "When you're a tiny dev with a tiny budget, you kind of rely on streamers playing your game to spread the word. 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."

Aeternum Game Studios planned to launch their metroidvania Aeterna Lucis, a sequel to their 2021 game Aeterna Noctis, in September, but announced on Twitter Friday that they’ve now decided to delay the game to 2026. The studio wrote that “after the announcement of Silksong, we are fully aware that our game wouldn’t have the visibility it deserves. Competing with a phenomenon of that scale would not only be unfair to our team’s effort, but also to you, the community, who expect to experience this adventure under the best possible conditions.”

Aeternum cited a lack of dev kits as another reason for the delay and noted that “the game is already finished.” The studio also wrote

We also want to take this opportunity to thank Team Cherry. There’s no need to wish them luck–we know Silksong will be a success and a masterpiece. Instead of rivalry, what we feel is gratitude: thanks to them, the metroidvania genre is more alive than ever and in fact, they were one of the main inspirations that led us to create Aeterna Noctis and the entire saga now in development.

In contrast, indie studio Necrosoft has used Silksong’s release date to promote its RPG Demonschool, releasing on September 3. The studio wrote on Bluesky, “Okay, sure, Silksong is going to sell millions of copies. But can you play it in 4:3 on your CRT like Demonschool!?” 

Even bigger-name developers, like Bennett Foddy of Getting Over It fame, are at least mildly shook.

"Truth is we’re not sure [if we're delaying the game] yet," Foddy told Aftermath of literal walking simulator Baby Steps, which is currently set to launch on September 8. "We’re talking about it, though."

But is this all-hands-on-deck level of concern warranted? Simon Carless, founder of GameDiscoverCo and relentless analyzer of Steam data, isn't so sure.

"In most cases, I do think devs are being too cautious in moving out of Silksong's way," he told Aftermath. "Unless you feel like your buyers majorly overlap with Silksong's, or you believe you are going to go viral with the same streamers who will cover Silksong, we've not seen a lot of evidence that game launches depress spending on other games. We've seen private research indicating that player counts for already-launched rival games were only affected if the game was in the same, very specific subgenre as that big launch."

That said, dodge rolling out of Silksong's path at the last second does mean one less variable to worry about.

"One obvious issue here is that if you launch your game around Silksong and it's disappointing, you may always wonder if it was because you didn't move your release date," said Carless. "There's no A/B testing for that, but we do think—in general —people worry about launch windows of other games too much. It's not like the physical movie biz where there's only a fixed amount of screens to show on."

It’s not a surprise to see indie games, especially those in the same genre as Silksong, feeling the need to rethink their plans in light of Team Cherry’s long-awaited sequel. AAA games faced a similar challenge planning their releases around the generational juggernaut of Grand Theft Auto VI, with some publishers telling The Game Business back in March that they were waiting to confirm their release dates until Rockstar picked theirs. (GTA VI was ultimately delayed to May 2026.) 

Silksong, however, is an indie from a small studio, and it came by its tidal wave of hype uniquely — growing over the years from a respectably anticipated sequel to a full-on myth, sans traditional marketing. While the game’s release certainly feels like An Event, it’s difficult to say whether it will suck the air out of the room in the same way as something like GTA VI. Can Silksong live up to the sheer weight of expectation placed upon it? And does this kind of intrigue translate to sales and days or weeks of rapt attention? For now, it’s unclear, but it’s hard to blame developers for going with a “better safe than sorry” approach.

Update 8/22/25: Added comments from additional devs.