Silksong will be priced at $20. It feels low for how long it’s been in development and how big the franchise is. Developer Team Cherry could’ve charged $30 or even $40 and still sold millions of copies because of how beloved the original Hollow Knight is, not to mention how much hype players have had for Silksong since 2019.

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Still, it really costs only $20. This low price is making some people, including other indie developers, believe the game is so cheap that it will hurt the pricing options of other indie games.

As a dev making a smaller Metroidvania than Silksong, which I originally though would be fairly priced at 20 USD… what should I price it now?

It'll be a 10-15+ hours game, but it was made by one person with limited dev time and funds, I can't afford to give it away for free. https://t.co/FFcgz6TI1z

— Lone Fungus (@BastiArtGames) September 1, 2025

New and small indie devs may think players will compare their game’s price to Silksong. If it’s anything close to $20, people would say, “This game isn’t Silksong, so $20 is too much.” The devs fear this will force them to undercharge for their games. This potential pressure to reduce prices could make new game projects unsustainable, since these games aren’t Silksong and never will be, so they must be worth less than $20.

If devs believe their game is competing with Silksong across the board, including price, that could lead to giving up or, as has happened, delaying their games only to avoid a release near that of Silksong. Depending on how far it spreads, the ripples could reach throughout the indie scene and cause quite a bit of damage.

But I think we’ll avoid most of this. What people forget is that Silksong isn’t in competition with small and new indie games because its reach and scope are at a far higher level. Upcoming indie games compete with Silksong the way underground bands compete with Taylor Swift, or the way this article competes with The Washington Post’s Pulitzer-worthy features.

One could assume otherwise. Since Silksong is an indie game, other indie games will see it as a direct competitor. But the thing is, “indie” isn’t a game genre, and people usually enjoy games for their core gameplay and spend money based on expected patterns: MOBAs and hero shooters are free with premium cosmetics; MMORPGs may have a subscription; fighting games are paid with yearly character passes; and indie metroidvanias are cheap. So, let’s compare Silksong’s price with that of other games in the same genre, metroidvanias.

The average price of the top 50 best-selling metroidvanias on Steam is $17, according to SteamDB. That means Silksong’s $20 price tag is more expensive, not less, than its competitors’. It’s only cheaper than the average $31 price tag of all top 100 Steam games, but that includes gigantic AAA productions that will always cost more than a game with three core developers like Silksong. So if an indie developer wanted to release their new metroidvania for $25, the problem wouldn’t be that it’s more expensive than Silksong, but that it’s more expensive than the industry average.

If indie devs are anxious about their game’s pricing, they should focus on problems that affect their financials in ways that Silksong never will. Devs have to give Steam 30% of their game sales, lower the price for specific regions, make frequent price cuts to cater to Steam’s sale-addicted user base, and sometimes create microtransactions or paid downloadable content to get extra revenue. Add on top of that how they have to pray their game content doesn’t piss off a payment processor that could censor and ban their title from online stores.

Everyone who creates a product, including a game, has to worry about competition. However, the level of worry and anxiety some developers are experiencing seems to be blowing things out of proportion, from delaying the release of their titles not to clash with Silksong to considering whether they should charge the same $20 for their games.

The gaming industry is more likely to be hurt by the fear of Silksong’s impact than by the game’s actual release. We don’t need releases to become like the stock market, where bad things happen because everyone freaks out at once, leading to that panic becoming real.

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