After years of eager anticipation, Team Cherry surprised the video game world with a mere two weeks’ notice that Hollow Knight: Silksong would launch on September 4. While several independent game studios wisely shifted their release dates to avoid this unexpected powerhouse, Rogue Factor’s Hell Is Us had already committed to the same launch window months in advance. Now, the creative director behind Hell Is Us is speaking out, believing that Silksong’s sudden arrival significantly hurt their game’s sales, and he’s not holding back his disappointment.
During an appearance on the Friends Per Second podcast, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête conceded that Team Cherry was well within its rights to choose any release date it wished. However, he described the decision to drop Silksong with such minimal warning as ‘a little callous.’
Jacques-Belletête remarked, ‘When you know you’re that big, I think a shadow drop is a bit like—’wow.” He further emphasized, ‘As the ‘GTA 6 of indie’… to shadow drop something like this is a little callous.’
According to Jacques-Belletête, both Rogue Factor and their publisher Nacon considered delaying Hell Is Us. Yet, numerous complex factors made such a change difficult, notably the substantial effort required to process refunds for existing pre-orders.
Despite the challenges, Jacques-Belletête stated, ‘We decided to keep the date, and I’m happy that we did.’ He elaborated that while Hell Is Us was larger than some other indie titles that did postpone their releases, altering their own launch schedule would have been ‘a pretty big [endeavor].’
Jacques-Belletête reiterated his conviction that Silksong’s release negatively impacted Hell Is Us’ sales, though he admitted he currently lacks concrete sales figures to fully support this claim.
Meanwhile, Silksong launched to immense popularity, boasting a huge number of concurrent players on Steam during its debut weekend. However, a frequent criticism quickly emerged regarding the game’s high difficulty. In response, fans rapidly developed mods to make Silksong more accessible, and Team Cherry soon followed suit with an official patch to ease the challenge.