This could be, hollow knight is one hell of a bar to clear. Valhiem was a lesson that studios are hard to scale up, and doing it distracts from development. There’s also something to be said about making a dream project, then having the focus and drive to keep it going and expanding.
Annd It’s possible their main dev might be addicted to balatro and there’s no way to factor or predict that kind of impact.
It was way more obvious back when team cherry went radio silence (circa 2022?) - and on some level I can understand “we’re game journalists, no one gets a pass” targeting a heavily delayed game, but I’m admittedly one of those fans that have no problem giving Cherry whatever time they need. I’m in no rush.
GamesRadar has been pushing these “but where gam?” articles for some time. It started right after silksong was delayed past the original hollow knight dev time. They seem utterly convinced silksong will be vaporware, or (more likely) it drives plenty of clicks complaining.
Games are doing fine for now, but how much longer will devs and artists continue being treated like disposable tissue before we see the talent pool implode? It doesn’t seem to matter what game is built, how well it performs, if it’s single player or live service - the layoffs and closures come for everyone.