[OPINION] PC Gamer’s Windrose Take Is Everything Wrong With Modern Games Journalism

If you enjoy independent indie game coverage, consider supporting Indie-Games.eu on Patreon. It helps keep the site independent.

The PC Gamer article, wrote by Wes Fenlon and published on April 14, 2026, carries the absurdly clickbaity title “After 4 hours of pirate survival in Windrose, I’m reinstalling Sea of Thieves” and it perfectly shows everything wrong with modern gaming journalism. Here we have a prominent publication that, instead of giving a fair shake to an ambitious indie pirate survival-crafting game fresh out of early access launch, decides to bury it under a headline that’s basically a public execution notice.

Sure, Fenlon touches on some valid problems in the piece: frustrating one-shot deaths from wildlife, clunky multiplayer, and a crafting loop that feels more like busywork than swashbuckling adventure, but the whole exercise reeks of laziness and corporate favoritism.

How does a writer clock just four hours on a brand-new early access title, declare it a generic survival skin slapped onto pirate aesthetics, and then pat themselves on the back for reinstalling an eight-year-old Microsoft-backed game like Sea of Thieves? It’s not criticism; it’s performative nostalgia from someone who clearly went in expecting (or hoping for) a reason to dunk on the little guy.

Let’s be real: Windrose, developed by the small team at Kraken Express and backed regionally in Japan by Pocketpair Publishing (the same studio behind the Palworld phenomenon), is still in its infancy. It launched into early access and immediately smashed a concurrent player peak of nearly 70,000 on Steam, with positive reviews pouring in from actual players who are actually putting in the time to build ships, explore open seas, and chase that pirate fantasy in a PvE-focused world.

Yet PC Gamer’s response is to frame it as a disappointment compared to Sea of Thieves, a fully matured, iteratively updated AAA title from Rare and Xbox Game Studios that’s had nearly a decade to refine its physics, social chaos, and evolving content like Tall Tales and seasonal events. One is raw potential still finding its legs; the other is a polished, battle-tested machine with dedicated servers and a massive content backlog. Work like this doesn’t inform readers; it just generates outrage clicks.

This isn’t isolated case, it’s yet another chapter in how outlets like PC Gamer keep proving they’re out of touch, more interested in propping up established AAA powerhouses (hello, Microsoft money and access journalism vibes) than nurturing indies that are actually resonating with gamers. The backlash on X has been swift and brutal, with players calling it out as skill-issue whining, corporate shilling, and straight-up disrespect to a small dev team that’s poured heart into something different.

Why take a piss on an underdog like Kraken Express when the game is delivering exactly what its wishlisted audience (over 1.5 million pre-launch) wanted: a co-op pirate survival title that’s not just another Sea of Thieves clone? And here’s the thing, Pocketpair ends up the real winner in all this noise.

PC Gamer needs to do better: hire writers who actually invest the time to understand what makes an early access game good, rather than churning out rage-bait that drags the entire industry down and reminds everyone why so many gamers have tuned out traditional outlets. This kind of “journalism” doesn’t elevate the conversation; it just muddies it for views.