Hell Is Us game director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête has opened up on Team Cherry’s decision to suddenly announce Silksong’s release date a couple of weeks in advance. While the dev understands the team did nothing wrong, the move didn’t sit well with the director.
Hollow Knight: Silksong finally got a demo at Gamescom 2025. It was also shown off during Opening Night Live, and it meant that a release date announcement was surely looming. However, we don’t think anyone saw Team Cherry suddenly declaring Silksong’s release date to be two weeks away at the time.
Given Silksong’s hype, it was inevitable that it would have an impact on other games.
Silksong is The “GTA 6 of Indie”
Demonschool was delayed to November due to Silksong, and Baby Steps also fell victim to the shadow drop release date. Silksong’s release date wasn’t an authentic shadow drop, as this usually means a game launches on the same day. But the magnitude of Silksong meant few companies had any time to prepare for one of 2025’s biggest releases.
In an interview with Skill Up, Hell Is Us director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête was asked about Silksong’s sudden release date announcement.
“They’re allowed to do what they did. There are no rules or laws against that. I don’t wanna get say they caused this to us or somebody else, I don’t really care about that, and I don’t really wanna get into that type of debate, but when you’re that big, I think a shadow drop is a bit like wow.”
Jonathan described Silksong as the “GTA 6 of Indie” and didn’t hold back on his thoughts: “To shadow drop something like this is a little callous.”
It’s quite a strong adjective from the director, and probably underlines just how massive Team Cherry’s call was and how much it impacted countless developers and publishers.
This is where we want to hear from you. This is a touchy subject as it’s clearly affected upcoming games. Given the game’s following and expected sales that would accompany Hollow Knight: Silksong, was it wrong of Team Cherry to shadow drop the release date? Or is it the company’s right to do what it wants and exercise its own freedom?
Leave a comment below, and head to the Insider Gaming forum to take this topic further.
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Andy is Insider Gaming's Senior Evergreen Editor and has been in the games journalism sphere in one way or another for over 7 years. His video game taste is as…
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