This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Reldarino on 2025-02-23 14:15:04+00:00.

Original Title: [VideoGames] How a community gaslighted itself to solve an ARG that never existed. (The story of Silksong, one of Steam’s most wishlisted games, its origins, development, and the long wait for a sequel.)

This post was initially meant to be a response to a comment from u/acanthostegaaa but since Reddit didn’t allow such long comments, I tried to do my best to adapt it to a post and why not, add a little extra info for those interested.

Here is my attempt at narrating the story behind Silksong, a popular and awaited videogame, why people are desperate for it’s release, why an indie game is one of steam’s most wishlisted game and the story of how the community gaslighted itself to believe they were solving an ARG that may have not even existed in the first place.

Silksong is a sequel to a popular indie game, Hollow Knight, that was released back in 2017.

The game is widely considered to be a masterpiece of its genre (it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you happen to like metroidvanias -a genre derived from old metroid and castlevania games- Hollow knight is a MUST try).

This game had humble origins, with their creators opening up a page to get their game funded on kickstarter () you can see they weren’t even the type of game to have wildly succeeded before release, they did manage to get their funding goals, and even managed to get some of the goals for proyects beyond, but the reality is they didn’t really have much to spare.

There are some wild stories of the development of this game, and it is obvious it was made with as much love as possible, considering it was made almost entirely by 3 guys, I don’t want to keep diving on its origin but suffice it to say they used ALL of their fundings to improve the game further, and they 100% would have kept working on it hadn’t they literally run out of funds for it.

In the end, the game was a success, which kept getting better as time passed because their devs kept updating the game, giving free new content, and even entire new areas and challenges as part of their free DLCs.

If you did check out the kickstarter, there is ONE important thing they did get the funding to, but never really ended up developing.

A second playable character.

This character was meant to be released some time later as part of another update, though at the time is was suspected it would come out as a paid dlc, as it was expected to change the game a little more than previous ones.

People really wanted to try it out, to have more of this successfull metroidvania which happened to have everything people seemed to have been looking for in a game of its type.

But the dlc didnt come out.

It was delayed.

And delayed.

And delayed.

It seemed Team Cherry, its developers, wanted to make this dlc special. Every time they thought something would be cool, they said “huh, why don’t we also add that?”

And they kept going, the dlc growing larger and larger, more and more content being added to it.

Until, at some point, it was stated that this 2nd playable character wouldn’t come out as a dlc.

It wouldn’t come out in the game.

It would have its own game.

A sequel to Hollow Knight

And thus, Hollow Knight: Silksong, the leyend, was born.

You can watch it’s trailer in its full glory here ()

This is pretty much an introduction intended to make people outside of the genre understand why a game, an indie game at that, seems so relevant.

Team Cherry managed to create a MASTER PIECE with Hollow Knight, a game that satisfied the things its genre promises and took it to the limit.

And finally, after all that time, they would make ANOTHER hollow knight game, a fresh start, a new character, a new world and story to discover.

People went crazy with speculation and theories.

And now, years later, we are here, there is no sequel to Hollow Knight, there is no second character, just it’s promise, year after years fans gathered at all game shows expecting a release date, a new trailer, SOMETHING about their so beloved and expected game.

But all there was, was the occasional tweets and messages from team cherry stating they were still working.

And eventually, radio silence, even that was gone.

I think it’s at this point that the community started going crazy, some people believing the game wouldn’t release, and some people clinging to whatever hope there was left to keep believing, to not give up on the hope of their dreamed sequel.

And with that, “silkposts” -fake posts (often edited twitter messages) that revealed a release date, or some statement from team cherry- went rampant.

Some silkposts were more elaborate than others, some were believable to the point the whole community convinced themselves of their information being true.

Some people would claim to be insiders, game testers, friends of the developers etc and would give random release windows which always turned out to be fake.

At some point this became some sort of competition, who would make the most believable silkpost? Who would convince the most people that something false, was true.

And that led to the eventual introduction of a legend, or a villain, neccessary for this story.

E1331

This motherf**** is a MASTER at silkposting, making very elaborate lies, at one point he convinced the ENTIRE SUBREDDIT (mods included) that he was facing charges from team cherry because of his fake tweets impersonating a member of Team Cherry.

Here is one of his posts on the matter, originally not tagged as Silkpost:

Here is a funny reaction to all that, a mod post with some comments saying they would miss their favorite Silkposter.

He convinced us all, some people made posts about missing him, how he kept the subreddit alive, etc.

Eventually, he returned. It was all a lie. There was no NDA nor did anyone reach to him, nothing.

And of course, he kept silkposting like nothing happened.

Done with the introduction, we can move to other topics, don’t worry about E1331, he will come back in the story, he always does.

Recently, as mentioned in the title, a massive coincidence would strike the subreddit.

At this point most people are tired of the wait, some people claim to even forget the game really exist and that they just visit the subreddit to make fun of an imaginary game.

Granted, there was this new trailer () which, hinted by MICROSOFT THEMSELVES was a reveal that silksong would release within 6 months of the trailer reveal, which of course, didn’t happen.

We haven’t had news from Team Cherry in YEARS, we know NOTHING about the development of Silksong, nothing, more and more people were getting convinced the game was just never coming out, some people started and finished their careers while waiting, it was too long a time, too many silkspost, and too few actual news.

But eventually, it striked.

One of the game developers changed their username and profile picture on twitter, I believe his new username could be rearranged to form “we love a mystery, reddit” or something like that (not exactly that, but it was something similar, if you ignore that there were 3 extra letters that didnt fit lol)

And he started tweeting random things which made no sense (he always does, but these were in succession, and the community would find their way to make them special)

You see, all of his tweets linked to events that happened on april 2nd.

There were 2 things the community couldn’t figure out.

Most of his tweets linked to historic events that happened on april 2nd, for example napoleon’s wedding, some wine from Australia dated to april, etc

But why was his profile picture a cake? And there was one enigmatic tweet “keep your eyes closed tomorrow” which led nowhere.

The community was puzzled.

But it would strike again, first, when it was revealed “keep your eyes closed tomorrow” is a tweet Imagine Dragons made the year before… on april 2nd

And reverse searching the dev’s new pfp led to a cake recipe. Uploaded on april 2nd.

It ALL aligned, no?

That was it!

After all these years of radio silence

After all this time

SOMETHING!

And it got WORSE.

THE VERY NEXT DAY, Nintendo, the company that released the first silksong trailer ages ago made an announcement.

Switch 2.

More info on the nintendo direct.

April 2nd.

The community went WILD, CRAZY!

That’s another layer to the “keep your eyes closed tomorrow” too, no? IT WAS THE SWITCH REVEAL! SILKSONG MAY COME OUT AS A RELEASE GAME!

You can read a megathread of the topic here

This was no normal thing, it was SOMETHING, and it made a ruckus big enough that team cherry’s PR guy FINALLY said something.

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!

“It was nothing”

YES! HE SAID… wait… what?

And so, a new era of silksanity began.

It ALL aligned so PERFECTLY it was IT… but the devs denied it? Why?

And the community decided it COULDNT be nothing, there HAD to be something.

What’s worse, Team Cherry didn’t even communicate the fact that it was nothing themselves, they did it through a famous youtuber.

WHAT? WHY?

YES! OF COURSE! The dev, William, pointed…

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1iwb1vh/videogames_how_a_community_gaslighted_itself_to/