Silksong Hastens the Death of the Critic

By Grace Benfell | September 4, 2025 | 2:15pm

Video Games Features hollow knight: silksong

Silksong Hastens the Death of the Critic

We know games criticism is dying, you don’t need to rub it in. Shortly after it was announced that Hollow Knight: Silksong would be surprise dropping in just two weeks, Team Cherry disclosed that no press outlet would be getting codes ahead of time. Jason Schreier reported them as saying that “it would be unfair for critics to be playing before Kickstarter backers and other players.” This could feel benign. Press and fans alike praised the decision. But however small, this represents the deterioration of criticism as a profession, an art, and as a service to the audience.

Let me address some of the obvious counterarguments. The game is destined to be a financial success, even if it in any way fails to live up to the absurd hype. Reviews might influence the game’s reception, but its overall perception will be shaped more by video essays months after the fact than any article around launch. Anyway, as etcetega on Third Tier Miscellany points out, reviewers won’t really be able to dig into Silksong over the course of two measly weeks. Even if there were to spend every moment of an eight hour workday playing and writing about it, an impossibility for essentially every writer in the space, it would be a lot to get through.

However, the suggestion that the lack of early codes will prevent that crunch is absurd. The rush to have the first take, or to be the first to have a suite of guides up to draw in Silksong players, will be too intoxicating to forego. Even two weeks offers a broad timeline, however unreasonable. The crunch will put some strain on mainstream sites, but the biggest victims will be teams of freelancers at sites owned by Valnet or Gamurs Group. With little editorial oversight and measely payments per article, teams of underpaid writers will squeeze every bit of content they can muster out of Silksong‘s dozens of hours.

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None of that, to be clear, is Team Cherry’s fault. The free-for-all would happen whether they did or didn’t distribute codes. It’s the cycle of churn that most outlets find themselves in. Brendan Sinclair at Gamesindustry.biz made a similar case when Starfield codes didn’t make it to some outlets two whole years ago. And these problems stretch back far longer.

Additionally, the woes of games criticism are far from unique to it. Both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times film critic positions were recently laid off, meaning that the newspapers that produced Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel now have no film critics to their name (on staff anyway). Vanity Fair and The New York Times have recently fired critics or pivoted to video. The deterioration of arts funding has hit criticism just as hard as any other field.

But does that let Team Cherry off the hook? In a word: No. If Ubisoft or Sony dodged launch reviews that would be suspicious. Bethesda and Xbox only (halfway) got away with it with Starfield because they gave codes to most outlets. Team Cherry can do it because it has an almost bottomless reservoir of good will and because they have the excuse of being a small team (though, unlike most small teams, they have nigh-infinite resources). However well-intentioned, Team Cherry’s decision would be the preferred model of every executive. Let us move product directly to the consumer, without the pesky interference of critics who might muck things up with their opinions. It’s easy to think of Homer Simpson eating donuts in hell.

How did we get here? This is a complicated and wide-ranging question, but I want to focus on the emotional landscape of criticism. It is easy to think of criticism as an insular practice, one focused on the subjective opinions of a specialized few. This is, of course, rooted in some truth. But beyond cultural pressures and elite institutions, a review is a conversation. There is a shared thing between the critic and the reader, an experience had or yet to be had, that the critic is trying to build a bridge to. A critic can offer clarity about complex or formally difficult works. She can lend words to experiences as yet unvoiced, offering understanding to marginal art and perspective beyond the mainstream. A critic can be wrong or right. When she’s good, it doesn’t really matter. There is a kind of truth that goes beyond correctness. The critic’s articulation of a position forces the reader to respond, even just in their mind. In an age of loneliness and defensiveness, it is easy to undervalue that exchange.

Look, I bear plenty of cynicism about this profession. I’ve written often, and forcefully, about how narrow the gap is between PR and criticism in video games. But I do think there is a gap. Even mainstream outlets like GameSpot have battled consensus, boosted hot takes, or even just published controversial reviews. Team Cherry’s decision enforces the structure of an enthusiast press. If critics are merely fans with access, then it would be unfair to give them early keys. But, ideally, a critic works. Any obstacle to that work is an obstacle in the way of conversation and thought.

Grace Benfell is a queer woman, critic, and aspiring fan fiction author. She writes on her blog Grace in the Machine and can be found @gracemachine on BlueSky.