"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.
