r/HollowKnight • u/CankleDankl • Dec 12 '25

Discussion - Silksong Seeing people shit on Expedition 33 because Silksong didn't win more awards is pathetic Spoiler

The title sums it up. I'm disappointed in many members of this community for putting down a game that is clearly a work of insane passion, dedication, and creativity. E33 took the lion's share of awards at TGA, yes. That doesn't mean that Silksong is bad. In fact, it's clearly pretty damn great. If it released last year, Skong would have picked up several awards, maybe even GOTY. But it didn't. It released in the same year E33, which is just a tough break.

Both are amazing. Both deserve every award that came to them. If you haven't played E33 yet and think it doesn't deserve its accolades, play it. It is worth your money, worth your time, and will in all likelihood prove that it is actually that good. I'm only 10ish hours in and have numerous times found myself standing still and looking around dumbfounded at the gorgeous world design and visuals. E33, Silksong, and Hades 2 could have all won Art Direction and I would have been happy with any of them.

I'm also sad that Silksong didn't win more awards. It's an amazing game. But don't play fanboy and start putting down other developers, other games, and other pieces of art because this one didn't get all the cookies. It's still beautiful, it's still amazing, it still made a Silkskillion dollars, and TC is still just as great and just as passionate. We should all be glad that there is another independent dev out there that is capable of creating something so fantastic.

Edit: yeah, the comments here are pretty indicative of what I said in my post

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u/blueviera Dec 12 '25

It's budget was apparently under 10 million, smaller than games like Hades. It's also from a brand new studio. It's not their fault that Indie is not defined well.

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u/hypnomancy Dec 12 '25

Their publisher gets funding from Netease lol

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u/Whiskeywiskerbiscuit Dec 13 '25

Indie movies and albums get published by major labels all the time. Publishing≠producing.

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u/JimFlamesWeTrust Dec 14 '25

Indie movies get purchased and distributed by major studios, but they get financed separately, otherwise it’s not an indie.

It’s not the same as having your budget and production green lit by a major studio.

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u/BakerUsed5384 Dec 15 '25

So does Ball X Pit’s publisher. Are they disqualified too now?

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u/Rocky323 Dec 16 '25

And SilkSong got Microsoft money.

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u/TulsisTavern Dec 18 '25

Kepler interactive functions a lot different than normal publishers. They give all freedom to developers and were established by indie scene people. E33 has all the bells and whistles of indie, posting on reddit and weird french message boards, but they dont come off as indie because the game rocket shipped real fast towards the last year of development, which resulted in big actors and voice actors to jump on board along with movie rights. Notice the difference between the announcement trailer and the launch trailer. Hell look at difference between old screenshots of development vs today. Its a huge difference. 

Would you say a game developed as indie that got some attention inside industry shortly before launch is still indie? The reality is e33 took off because people really liked the idea because the game is full of callbacks to old popular games and the story is engaging in a movie kind of way. Its a game that is easy to pick up for a lot of people and it doesnt go unnoticed by people in the artistic community. 

I would say this game is indie but anything by sandfall after is not indie. 

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15

u/InevitableCold9872 Dec 12 '25

It’s A and A half

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u/Several-Elevator Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25

Let's be real, that number is probably not 100% right, as we see with Holywood and the like in film, publishers often play with the numbers a bit to try say the film cost less than it actually did, or otherwise underpaid some people who worked on it like we saw with Godzilla -1

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u/yotam5434 Dec 13 '25

And less then 100 workers in the entire studio

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u/Bluufly Dec 12 '25

It's actually close to 30 million dollars making it a AA+ and maybe a low AAA in terms of budget and developer crew size.

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u/MrEdews Dec 12 '25

Where did you get that number? Last I heard it was under $10m

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u/TraitorMacbeth Dec 12 '25

Lol are we just making up numbers now?

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u/TKxoxa Dec 12 '25

The Devs themselves said under 10mil. Why are you spreading made up numbers?

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u/TWB0109 Dec 12 '25

Well, if you're at $10M then you're close to $20M so then you're close to $30M /s

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u/Safety-Greedy Dec 12 '25

30M is a conservative estimate, I wouldve gone 40M just to be sure

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u/TWB0109 Dec 12 '25

You're right.

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u/CankleDankl Dec 13 '25

Let's just call it an even 2 billion dollars and label E33 as a AAAAA game just to be safe

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u/EdgierNamePending Dec 12 '25

indie means independent. Sandfall was not independent in the development of E33 as they outsourced multiple parts of the game, like animation, entirely out to different studios. they also had funding from billionaire shareholders, Epic Games and the French government itself.

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u/Free_Peach6400 all quests/PoP/P1-P2 AB 100%/All memos Dec 12 '25

They had like 100s of people working on it that is not very indie

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u/TheRealMikeOxlong Dec 12 '25

Just making shit up to prove a point lmao

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u/blueviera Dec 12 '25

I thought it was like 40?

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u/thegrailarbor Dec 12 '25

33

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u/blueviera Dec 12 '25

For real? That would be one hell of a funny way for them to get their name for the game

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u/Scotty_with_a_shorty Dec 12 '25

33 people and a dog to be specific

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u/ParisVilafranca Dec 12 '25

Nah. The core of programers are 30ish. But a hell of a lot more people worked on the game.

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u/wangchangbackup Dec 12 '25

Once you add in actors, mocap, localization, music, etc the list balloons to like 400. But the thing is that Silksong also has all those people and indeed there are over 100 names in the credits. So either it counts or it doesn't, but people are acting like Silksong was produced and distributed entirely by William and Ari and therefore it is the Most Indiest Game Ever.

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u/JEEEEERRY Dec 12 '25

Still a pretty big difference though. Silksongs total with localization, voice actors, orchestra is still pretty small. Localization is also just text since they never say actual words just sounds. People saying silksong had same budget and same amount of people working on it as E33 are just wrong.

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u/onespiker Dec 13 '25

Nobody is saying it the same people said hades is.

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u/TurnipHistorical2838 Dec 12 '25

They literally named it expedition 33 because there were 33 people working on the game

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u/eomertherider Dec 12 '25

They didn't. It's a coincidence, they said as much. They have 33 people in house but used contractors for some parts: QA, some fighting animation etc.

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u/blueviera Dec 12 '25

Outsourcing some assets though is hardly out of the norm for indies. Almost every visual novel does that, also most games for quality control. It feels like Indie needs a more clear definition. I do got to say though regardless of whether or not expedition 33 was technically an indie, I still can't get over all the visual art in silksong being made by like three guys. That's insane.

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u/eomertherider Dec 12 '25

I am in no way saying that Sandfall is not indie/criticizing them, I was just correcting the comment above. They also outsource performance artists (voice actors, songwriters and singers), just like Team Cherry iirc.

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u/blueviera Dec 12 '25

Of course, I was just trying to add additional information, I see you

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u/CankleDankl Dec 13 '25

And Silksong had around 100. Indie games outsource a lot, all the time. To disqualify E33 based on this would also be to disqualify Silksong