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Hollow Knight: Silksong’s release date causes delays for more games than you might think

by admin August 29, 2025

Have you heard of a game called Hollow Knight Silksong? Silly question – the chances are you heard little else during Gamescom week. This near fabled sequel finally got a release date after several long years of development, and large parts of our gaming world erupted in response. The Gamescom queues to play Silksong were enormous. History had happened. The 4th September – mark it in your diary.

But it wasn’t good news for everyone. Announcing the date so late in the game’s development – a mere two weeks from release – meant a slew of games which already had early September release dates were suddenly in a difficult position. What should they do – hold ground and go against Silksong? Or move?

The choice was easier for some. Silksong, for all its legendary status, is an indie game made by a small team, so it will appeal particularly to players of indie games, especially tricky side-scrolling Metroidvanias. Blockbuster-styled games like moody action adventure Hell is Us should prove more resistant to Silksong-related audience leech, ditto shooters and other games without obvious crossover appeal. It’s to indie games we should look to see the Silksong effect – and it didn’t take long to be felt.

Swiftly, role-playing game Demonschool and literal walking simulator Baby Steps lunged out of the way, delaying their releases by a couple of weeks. Then Dorfromantik developer Toukana pushed the release of its new game Star Birds back a bit. With each new day came another alteration, so instead of listing each Silksong-related delay game by game, I thought I’d round them up. I thought I’d take a closer look at the 2025 release schedule and investigate what has and hasn’t moved, and there was a lot more movement than I expected.

The movers:

Lord Ambermaze, from 2nd September to 17th September – “guess why lol”
Demonschool, from 3rd September to 19th November
Comfy Girl, from 3rd September to 8th October
CloverPit, from 3rd September to 26th September – “if we stick to our original date we would risk the launch of CloverPit a fair bit”
Kejora, from 4th September to January 2026
Star Birds, from 4th September to 10th September
Little Witch in the Woods, from 4th September to 15th September – “we fear that launching LWIW on the same day would not only dishearten our dedicated team but disappoint our devoted audience”
Moros Protocol, from 4th September to 18th September
Baby Steps, from September 8th to September 23rd
Faeland, from 9th September to release date TBC – “we want to make sure it arrives at time where it can receive the attention and care that it deserves”
Aeterna Lucis, from 18th September to 2026 – “The good thing is that I’ll get to enjoy #Silksong just like any other fan”
Megabonk, to 18th September – “UH OH MEGABONK DELAY”

The non-movers:

Metal Eden, 2nd September
Hirogami, 3rd September – “Hirogami’s launch date is staying exactly where it is”
Jotunnslayer 1.0 release, 3rd September
Adventure of Samsara, 4th September
Hell is Us, 4th September
Jetrunner, 4th September
Fling to the Finish on consoles, still 4th September – “yes, we know what else is coming out that day”
Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots, 4th September
Dark Deity 2 on Switch 2, 4th September – Silksong’s release announcement “was not as fun for me as I had hoped”
Cronos: The New Dawn, 5th September
Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion, 5th September
Shuten Order, 5th September

I’ll try to keep this list updated if and when any other games’ dates move around, by the way. But what about you – did the Silksong news affect you? Are you eager to play it? Or are you nonplussed?

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August 29, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Elden Ring Nightreign’s evil Deep Of Night mode gets a release date, but some people are already playing it

by admin August 28, 2025

Elden Ring Nightreign will get a new rock-hard Expedition mode called Deep of Night on 11th September. “Rock-hard” is a cliché worn to uselessness, of course: to be more specific, this is at least tungsten-carbide-hard, possibly even as hard as stishovite, though the exact degree of toughness is variable.

It’s variable because Deep of Night gets statistically harder, the more you win, with a difficulty rating or “depth” that fluctuates based on wins and losses. Enemies are tougher than usual by default, and you can’t specify which Nightlord you’re hunting, so be prepared for nasty surprises. There are new special Depth Relics, exclusive to this mode, which sadistically bundle together additional buffs and debuffs.

Hungry for more d33tz? Lucky for you, dataminers managed to unearth Deep of Night from the existing game’s files a whole three weeks ago, as written up by Mark. It looks like there are five “depths” in total, and there is mention of “magmafied” enemy variants.

Following the aforesaid datamining, Elden Ring Nightreign modders have contrived to get the mode operational and begun posting videos that show off some of the new gear. Kotaku have a write-up of those videos in which we are exposed to the harrowing truth that rats in the starting camp take three hits to kill, not two. Seriously, this is the kind of switch-up that could wreck a whole expedition. There’s also talk of one of the new gear items, a Sentry’s Torch that increases lightning damage negation while increasing the damage taken from the peripheral Night’s Tide.

Watch on YouTube

Seems fun? I find that every From game gets harder, the more I play it, but then again, that also applies to getting up in the morning as I age. I’m pretty sure datamining wasn’t what From Software had in mind when they talked about hidden depths. I’d ask them to comment, but they might get mad and throw a paperweight at me (+10 poise break).

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August 28, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Return to Silent Hill receives teaser trailer for film adaptation, revealing Pyramid Head and release date

by admin August 28, 2025

A teaser trailer for the film Return to Silent Hill has been revealed, giving us a first proper look at the Silent Hill 2 adaptation, its version of Pyramid Head, and a release window.

Christophe Gans is in the director’s chair, following his work on the 2006 Silent Hill film starring Sean Bean. Jeremy Irvine (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Treadstone, War Horse) stars as James.

Gans previously stated the film would be a faithful adaptation of Konami’s beloved Silent Hill 2. “I am delighted to partner with Cineverse, which has shown a genuine understanding of fanship,” said Gans back in May. “Return to Silent Hill is an adaptation created out of deep respect for a true masterpiece of a game, Konami’s iconic Silent Hill 2. I hope fans will enjoy and be fulfilled with the experience this new film has to offer.”

Return to Silent Hill – Official Teaser Trailer (2025) Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily AndersonWatch on YouTube

The trailer, above, is only 40 seconds long, but it does show a suitably foggy environment, that iconic shot of James looking in the mirror, and of course some scary nurses. Best of all, it ends with a first look at Pyramid Head.

Return to Silent Hill is set for release in January 2026.

It’s all part of a resurgence of Konami’s horror franchise, following the success last year of Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake. Silent Hill f will be released next month – and no, it’s not a Soulslike.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.

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August 28, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Arizona teams up with The Rizzler to release real ‘Rizzler Berry’ drink

by admin August 27, 2025

Arizona Beverages is turning a prank into a product this fall. The company announced it will launch a new berry-flavored carbonated juice cocktail called Rizzler Berry in October, fronted by 9-year-old TikTok star Christian Joseph Savasta, better known as ‘The Rizzler.’

The drink originated as an April Fools’ gag earlier this year when Arizona shared mock-up cans on social media featuring Savasta as its “Chief Rizz Officer.” Posts teasing a fictional “Rizzberry” flavor quickly went viral, generating millions of views across social media and sparking distributor inquiries about whether the drink was real.

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Arizona Chief Marketing Officer Spencer Vultaggio said the reaction convinced the company to make the product for real. The flavor combines strawberry, cherry, raspberry, blackberry, apple, and blue raspberry, with Savasta describing it as “fizzy and tastes like berry juice…sweet but not too sweet.”

Arizona’s marketing push

To promote the launch, Savasta toured Arizona’s 60-acre factory and visitor center in Keasbey, New Jersey, dubbed “AriZonaLand.” He joined co-founder Don Vultaggio in the lab to recreate the drink’s development.

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This comes amid rumors that Arizona will have to raise the price of its iconic drinks due to tariffs on aluminum cans. However, Vultaggio has since said they will not be doing so anytime soon.

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August 27, 2025 0 comments

An image of Hornet from Silksong engulfed with rage.

Product Reviews

Here’s every game that Silksong’s surprise release has delayed as indies scramble to escape its powerful aura

by admin August 27, 2025

“From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska, with a sawed-off .410 on my lap,” Bruce Springsteen crooned in his magnificent 1982 ballad Nebraska. “Through to the badlands of Wyoming, I killed everything in my path.” The Boss was of course relating the tale of infamous mass murderer Charles Starkweather, but he might as well have been talking about Hollow Knight: Silksong, the upcoming metroidvania that has now claimed at least eight victims since its surprise release date announcement earlier this month.

Nobody’s actually getting murdered here, to be clear: When I say “victims” I mean “other videogames,” and by “claimed” I mean that Silksong’s looming launch has led those games to adjust their own release plans so as not to be caught in the blast radius. It’s been quite a show, and while this sort of release date scramble isn’t unprecedented—Starfield made something of a mini-splash a couple years ago—I haven’t seen this kind of fracas since Cyberpunk 2077 started throwing elbows back in 2020.

How much of a difference moving away from Silksong will really make is a matter of debate, and it’s possible that some games are using it as cover for delays that are primarily driven by other considerations. But Silksong is the current king of Steam’s most wishlisted chart—beating out games like Borderlands 4 and Battlefield 6—so it’s understandable that pretty much every other unreleased PC game in proximity might want to take a little pause.

Also worth remembering that there’s no way to know how these things will ultimately work out. Back in 2023, PC Gamer editors Wes Fenlon and Jody Macgregor dared contemplate the possibility that Baldur’s Gate 3, which had moved its release date up a month to avoid Starfield, might actually be the better game. And we all know what happened there.

Anyway, with all that laid out, here’s our list of all the games that have been delayed by Silksong. We’ll add to it as necessary, although with Silksong now just over a week away, the bodies may stop dropping soon. Metaphorically, that is.

In the order we noticed them:

The Balatro-like slot machine game said, literally, “Silksong lol” and moved from September 3 to September 26.

🚨GAME DELAY 🚨
due to Silksong (can’t wait to play) launching just a day after CloverPit, we decided to delay our release
our new release date is 26th Sept
we poured our hearts into our little game, so we want to give it the best possible shot. thanks for understanding!!

— @panikarcade.bsky.social (@panikarcade.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-08-27T18:31:53.272Z

Stomp and the Sword of Miracles

A Kickstarter had been planned for September 12, with a demo launching on Steam on August 29, “giving it a little boost beforehand,” but both have been delayed to an unspecified date. Developer Bee Braun said they “feel like a little krill trying to not get eaten by a blue whale.”

Head’s up – the Stomp demo has had to be suddenly delayed. I’ll keep you all updated when I know what the plan is.

— @frogteam.games (@frogteam.games.bsky.social) 2025-08-27T18:31:53.251Z

Faeland

More than seven years after a successful Kickstarter, Faeland was set to launch on September 9. No longer: “We’ve poured years of work and love into Faeland, and we want to make sure it arrives at a time when it can receive the attention and care it deserves.” A new date hasn’t been announced but is “coming soon.”

(Image credit: Talegames)

Aeterna Lucis

The sequel to the well-received metroidvania Aeterna Noctis was aiming for a September release but is now coming sometime in 2026. Aeternum Game Studios pointed the finger at Silksong, but also acknowledged that it still doesn’t have the devkits it needs for a simultaneous release on all next-gen platforms. Kind of a straw that broke the camel’s back situation.

(Image credit: Aeternum Game Studios)

The hit multiplayer climbing game is not delayed because it’s already out, but it’s feeling the heat anyway.

sent by a friend over d’cord…

— @glitchypsi.xyz (@glitchypsi.xyz.bsky.social) 2025-08-27T18:31:53.286Z

After initially signalling that it was ready to throw hands with Silksong, publisher Ysbryd had some vivid second thoughts: “We would not be doing Demonschool any favors by wading into waters we can clearly see are blood red.” It’s now set for November 19, a longer-than-most delay because October is crowded as hell too.

Anyway:

— @necrosoftgames.com (@necrosoftgames.com.bsky.social) 2025-08-27T18:31:53.309Z

The cozy life sim about, well, a little witch in the woods has pushed its 1.0 release date back from September 4 to September 15. “Silksong is a game we look up to with awe as developers, and eagerly anticipate as players,” Sunny Side Up wrote. “Given its immense influence, 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.”

Very sad. (Image credit: Sunny Side Up)

Bennett Foddy’s open world failson walking simulator has also stepped back, from September 8 to September 23.

Baby Steps | Now Releasing on September 23 – YouTube

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And finally, at least for now:

Moros Protocol

The sci-fi shooter has scrapped its planned September 4 release and will instead drop on September 18, “to ensure that the game releases under the best conditions for success.” Which is to say, nowhere near Silksong.

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August 27, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Demonschool delayed due to Hollow Knight Silksong release, “the GTA of indie games”

by admin August 26, 2025

Demonschool, the forthcoming RPG Eurogamer described as “Persona meets Buffy”, has been delayed once again due to the surprise release of Hollow Knight Silksong.

The game was originally intended for a release last year, but was delayed until 3rd September this year. Now it’s moved back to 19th November thanks to “brutal” market conditions.

The decision appears to have been made by publisher Ysbryd Games. “With 11 years under our belt as an indie publisher, we at Ysbryd Games are reasonably qualified to say that any point of 2025 on balance, has been or will be as brutal as market conditions can get when it comes to releasing a game,” it wrote in a statement on social media. “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.”

Demonschool release date trailerWatch on YouTube

Visibility is of prime importance for the publisher; as such “we would not be doing our game any favours by wading into waters we can clearly see are blood red”. Instead, it wants to allow Silksong to have its moment, and for Demonschool to follow.

The publisher has also confirmed there will be no more delays after this. Until release, more time will be spent polishing and enhancing the game experience, with more endings and minigames originally planned for a post-release patch to be included at launch.

This was not our choice but we understand why the choice was made. We aren’t mad at Ysbryd but at the situation. Dropping the GTA of indie games with 2 weeks notice makes everyone freak out. Ysbryd is being a good partner and paying for the delay. We’re sorry this is happening. https://t.co/uz2FlPMUNi

— Necrosoft Games | wishlist Demonschool now! (@necrosoftgames) August 25, 2025

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“This was not our choice but we understand why the choice was made,” wrote the developer Necrosoft Games in response. “We aren’t mad at Ysbryd but at the situation. Dropping the GTA of indie games with 2 weeks notice makes everyone freak out. Ysbryd is being a good partner and paying for the delay. We’re sorry this is happening.”

I went hands-on with a demo of Demonschool last year and came away impressed by its haunted university setting, graphic style, and turn-based combat.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.

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August 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Gorgeous Cybernoir Thriller Replaced Finally Has A New Release Date

by admin August 26, 2025

Replaced has been turning heads since it was first revealed back at E3 2021 (RIP), but actually completing the game has taken longer than anyone thought it would, including its developers at Sad Cat Studios. At long last, there’s good news, though: the team recently confirmed the gorgeous pixel art action game will arrive sometime next spring.

That early 2026 timeframe will be a bummer to those secretly hoping Replaced might still sneak out onto PC and Xbox before the end of the year, but it’s better than nothing for fans who have been waiting years to finally see the cinematic cyberpunk platformer in action for themselves. After missing its original 2022 launch window, the day-and-date Game Pass game has been subject to continuous delays. A 2024 launch slipped into 2025, which has now slipped into 2026. What makes this time any different?

“This is the first time I’m addressing this personally and that’s because I can finally say it with confidence,” game director Yura Zhdanovich revealed in a new developer update. “Replaced will be released in spring of 2026. We will need just a little more time to get it polished. And to be more precise, our final trailer for the game with the exact release date will be shown later this year.”

Zhdanovich seems to be teasing a final date getting announced at The Game Awards 2025. Until then, Replaced has looked surprisingly good during its recent showing at Gamescom. Much like Silksong, its repeated delays seem to have less to do with development woes (minus having to relocate because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine) than the fact that Sad Cat Studios had just been severely underestimating how much time it would take to get Replaced right.

Replaced is more than just eye-candy

Sporting a Batman: Arkham-like, combo-based combat system and tons of vibrant, detailed pixel art backgrounds, Replaced is exactly the kind of “hand-crafted” indie project that deserves as much production time as it can get. Add in the cinematic mood and ambiance of puzzle-platform games like Inside and Planet of Lana, and you have the recipe for something very special if Sad Cat Studios can pull it off. The latest demo of the game looks as promising as ever.

“We have done more than 600 clips of animation, which effectively translates to several thousands of hand painted frames of those animations blended together with beautiful VFX, amplifying the mix between retro and modern visuals,” Zhdanovich said. No AI-generated slop in sight. You love to see it.

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August 26, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Saints release veteran RB Cam Akers in initial cuts

by admin August 25, 2025

Katherine TerrellAug 25, 2025, 12:59 PM ET
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METAIRIE, La. — The New Orleans Saints released veteran running back Cam Akers, the Saints announced Monday.

Akers, a 2020 second-round draft pick, signed with the Saints in June and has been competing for a backup spot behind Alvin Kamara. Akers was released as part of a wave of 14 transactions the Saints made ahead of Tuesday’s roster cut deadline.

“NFL a crazy place,” Akers wrote on X on Monday, adding a crying face emoji to his post.

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“Difficult one, because he’s a really good running back in this league,” Saints coach Kellen Moore said Monday. “He can contribute for us, we just felt like, the depth of that room, Kendre [Miller] did a phenomenal job. … We have a number of other guys we feel like can provide some roles. We’ll finalize the rest of this running back group, but we feel like we have a really good group there.”

Akers began his career with the Los Angeles Rams and has played for the Houston Texans and the Minnesota Vikings in two separate stints. The Texans traded him to the Vikings last season, and he played in 12 games, carrying the ball 64 times for 297 yards and a touchdown. He also caught 10 passes for 52 yards and two touchdowns while with Minnesota last year.

The Saints have not finalized their 53-man roster, but currently have Kamara, Miller, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Devin Neal, Marcus Yarns and Velus Jones Jr. in their running back room.

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August 25, 2025 0 comments

Hermen Hulst, managing director and co-founder of Guerrilla Games, speaks during a Sony Corp. event ahead of the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Monday, June 15, 2015.

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After cancelling 8 of the 12 live service games Sony promised to release by 2025, PlayStation studios boss says the number doesn’t really matter: ‘What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences’

by admin August 25, 2025

By the time Sony started printing money releasing its exclusives onto PC, the company had made a name for itself delivering the biggest and best singleplayer games on the market. Its run of solo PS4 exclusives from Bloodborne to The Last of Us Part 2 was so strong that it blew Microsoft’s console strategy out of the water, in a way that the Xbox has arguably never recovered from. Even we PC heads with our vast Steam libraries had to acknowledge those games were pretty great.

Yet for the PlayStation 5, Sony decided it would almost completely ignore that legacy, and instead be all about live service. In 2022, former CEO Jim Ryan promised Sony would make and release 12 live-service games by 2025. As of 2025, only one of these—Helldivers 2—has enjoyed a successful launch. Seven were cancelled before release. Three are supposedly still in development (including the deeply troubled Marathon) and one of them was Concord.

It’s a strategy that has, so far, proven catastrophic, leaving the PS5 largely bereft of quality first-party exclusives. But if you thought gazing upon this virtual graveyard might cause Sony to reconsider its priorities, think again.

Concord – Gameplay Trailer | PS5 Games – YouTube

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Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group CEO Herman Hulst was recently asked about Sony’s live-service strategy by the Financial Times (via GamesRadar), as part of an in-depth article about the company’s broader business strategy. “The number [of live-service releases] is not so important,” Hulst told the FT. “What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences and a set of communities.”

Instead of changing strategy to avoid massive live-service failures like Concord, or cancellations like The Last of Us Online, Hulst says he basically wants Sony to fail better. “I don’t want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply.”

To change these massive failures into, er, smaller failures, Hulst says PlayStation has implemented several new safeguards, such as “more rigorous and more frequent testing in many different ways.” According to the FT, this includes a higher priority on group testing, more cross pollination of ideas within Sony, and “closer relationships” between top executives. “The advantage of every failure…is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.”

I would be more convinced by what Hulst says if Sony had demonstrated its PS4-era strategy no longer worked before going all in on chasing the theoretical live-service money train. Those glossy singleplayer titles were often enormously expensive to make, and selling games in general has become significantly harder over the last five years. But while Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 seems to have been a commercial disappointment, God of War: Ragnarok was the fastest-selling PlayStation title ever on launch in 2022, and had sold 15 million copies a full year before it came to PC in September last year.

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August 25, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Hollow Knight Just Hit An All-Time Peak On Steam After Silksong Release Date Reveal

by admin August 25, 2025

2017’s Hollow Knight just reached a new all-time peak concurrent-player record on Steam, and the achievement came just after developer Team Cherry announced the release date for its sequel, Silksong.

Hollow Knight reached an all-time peak concurrent record of 23,819 on Steam today, August 22. Measuring a game’s popularity by Steam concurrent numbers is never a perfect or complete encapsulation of a game’s popularity, and Hollow Knight being an exclusively single-player game that doesn’t rely on people playing at the same time muddies the waters as well. But what is evident here is that Hollow Knight’s popularity on Steam is growing in the wake of the big Silksong reveal.

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Now Playing: Hollow Knight: Silksong – Official Release Date Reveal Gameplay Trailer

Hollow Knight’s previously Steam concurrent record of around 20,000 players was achieved in May 2022. All of this data comes from SteamDB.

Steam’s own sales data shows that Hollow Knight jumped into the top 50 overall best-selling games on the platform. The game is also available on console platforms, but sales or engagement data is not available. Hollow Knight is also available on Game Pass (and Silksong will be as well).

At least three games have already been delayed due, in part, to Silksong. The game is set for release on September 4, and it’s been a long time coming.

“Hollow Knight: Silksong appears to be exactly what we all should have expected: a strong, well-designed, visually lovely game that carries forward the aesthetic and design philosophies of the original with thoughtful, if not earth-shattering, updates,” GameSpot’s Steve Watts wrote after going hands-on with Silksong at Gamescom this week.

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August 25, 2025 0 comments