At least eight developers have decided to push their projects’ publishing dates after Team Cherry announced that Hollow Knight: Silksong is releasing on September 4.
Exactly a week ago, the studio shared the news via its own YouTube channel. During the past seven days, multiple developers announced delays for their game and demo releases, directly mentioning Silksong’s popularity.
At the time of writing, this includes Aeterna Lucis by Aeternum Game Studios, Stomp and the Sword of Miracles by Frogteam Games, CloverPit by Panik Arcade, Demonschool by Necrosoft Games, Little Witch in the Woods by Sunny Side Up, Faeland by Talegames, Megabonk by Vedinad, and Baby Steps, which is being published by Devolver Digital.
The release of Little Witch in the Woods initially matched Silksong’s. In the delay announcement, Sunny Side Up said it’s moving the launch to September 15, given the “immense influence” of Team Cherry’s game. “We fear that launching Little Witch in the Woods on the same day would not only dishearten our dedicated team but also disappoint our devoted audience,” the studio wrote.
‘We would not be doing our game any favors by wading into waters we can clearly see are blood red’
Both CloverPit and Demonschool, now releasing on September 26 and November 19, respectively, were initially locked in for a launch on September 3, the day before Silksong’s release.
“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,” Panik Arcade wrote. Via GamesIndustryBiz, almost 5 million people have wishlisted Silksong. “So if we stick to our original date we would risk the launch of CloverPit a fair bit.”
Ysbryd Games, the publisher of Demonschool, called the process behind the decision an “anguished consideration,” saying that it’s “reasonably qualified to say that at any point of 2025 on balance, has been or will be as brutal as market conditions can get” when it comes to picking a release date.
“Crueler still, that we should find out with such short notice that Hollow Knight: Silksong will launch just one day after our planned release for Demonschool,” the publisher added.
Via Bluesky, Necrosoft Games said that the delay “was not our choice,” but that the studio “understands why the choice was made.” Necrosoft said that Ysbryd is paying for the delay. “Dropping the GTA of indies with 2 weeks notice makes everyone freak [out],” the developer added.
“We have to remind ourselves that gaining visibility for Demonschool is our main goal,” continues the publisher’s statement. “Thus, the Ysbryd team strongly believes we would not be doing our game any favors by wading into waters we can clearly see are blood red.”
The other four games were all slated to release sometime in September, but decided to move either later in the month or directly into 2026, as is the case for Aeterna Lucis. Out of all developers, Stomp and the Sword of Miracles and Faeland are notable examples, considering both games also fall into the metroidvania genre (similar to Silksong.)
Frogteam Games planned to release a demo for Stomp and the Sword of the Miracles on August 29, with a Kickstarter campaign launching on September 12. Now, the developer is unsure about when it’ll resume these plans.
“Trying to market an indie game is already really, really hard,” Frogteam wrote. “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 not to 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.”