Hollow Knight: Silksong's $20 price tag sparks debate regarding game pricing among indie developers

Team Cherry has confirmed that the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong will be priced at just $20, which, while met with applause from most fans, has ignited a debate within the indie scene surrounding the impact it could have on pricing expectations.

The details:

• Silksong has finally arrived after years of waiting, memes, delays, and its developer simply enjoying the creation process. With the level of hype surrounding the game, some expected Team Cherry to capitalize by charging prices more in line with AAA releases, but it instead announced that it will cost just slightly more than its predecessor at $20.
• The announcement was met with praise from fans but also led to some discussions surrounding the impact the game’s release could have on future expectations when it comes to indie pricing. In a post to Bluesky, developer, composer, and writer RJ Lake argued that the $20 price tag could give players a distorted view of what to expect from games around that price point in the future. "Silksong honestly should cost 40 bucks, and I'm not even joking," Lake said. "I won't go as far as to say it's bad, but it will have effects, and not all of those effects are good."
• As reported by Eurogamer’s Robert Purchese, some developers have turned to social media to ask for external input on pricing, feeling like their smaller titles are now priced unfairly. Luckily, the response has been rather positive, with many telling them to retain their existing pricing models, but Silksong’s launch has still led to several delays in order to prevent overlapping releases.
• Eurogamer also discussed the topic with Citizen Sleeper developer Gareth Damian Martin, who believes that it’s highly unlikely that Silksong’s $20 price will have an effect on the wider indie market. “No matter how big Silksong is, I don't think it can really affect the going rate for indies,” Damian Martin said. “It's just one data point, you'd need hundreds of indies to offer massive amounts of content for a low price to shift the market.”

More gaming news:

• IO Interactive's CEO has said that the failure of MindsEye has caused the company to rethink its third-party publishing strategy.
• A film adaptation of the Call of Duty franchise is currently in the works at Paramount.