Summary

  • After a seven-year wait, Silksong was launched, breaking multiple storefronts and servers.
  • Peaked at ~535,000 concurrent Steam players, second-highest indie peak and highest for a paid indie.
  • Surpassed major indie and AAA concurrent counts; weekend demand could push it higher.

After a long and arduous seven-year wait, I don't think there was ever any doubt that Hollow Knight: Silksong was going to be anything other than a phenomenon. Somehow, it still managed to even surpass that.

The second it launched, it broke almost every major storefront, including Steam, the Nintendo eShop, and the PlayStation Store, and within a handful of hours, it had already broken half a million concurrent players on Steam.

That number of players is the dream for almost every developer, and it's the 18th highest concurrent player count the Valve-owned platform has ever seen, but when compared to its contemporaries, Silksong's 535,000 players is the second-highest an indie game has ever achieved.

Hollow Knight: Silksong Is Off To An Astonishing Start

In the history of Steam, only one indie game has ever achieved more concurrent players than Hollow Knight: Silksong (if you exclude Banana, a 'game' in which you literally just click on a banana over and over).

The single indie game to beat Hollow Knight: Silksong's whopping player count is a social deduction game called Goose Goose Duck, which was released on October 3, 2021, and peaked at just over 700,000 players in January 2023.

It's worth noting that Goose Goose Duck is, and always has been, a free-to-play game, so Silksong is the indie game with the highest player count that you have to pay for.

The 535,000 players the Hollow Knight sequel reached last night helped it surpass a range of other indie darlings, including Valheim (502,387), Schedule I (459,075), and Among Us (447,476), alongside some major triple-A titles. These include GTA V, Monster Hunter World, and Skyrim.

Only a single game released this year, Monster Hunter Wilds, has eclipsed Silksong's concurrent player count, hitting a staggering 1,384,608 players at launch. That game, however, has been plagued by problems, currently sitting at 'Mostly Negative' in its recent Steam reviews, and seemingly struggling to sell copies.

With the weekend still to come, and those who abandoned hope of downloading and playing Hollow Knight: Silksong due to the store issues, the sky is truly the limit. Whatever happens, though, it's another major win for indies in 2025.

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Hollow Knight: Silksong

Metroidvania Systems OpenCritic Reviews Released September 4, 2025 Developer(s) Team Cherry Publisher(s) Team Cherry Engine Unity Franchise Hollow Knight Number of Players Single-player Steam Deck Compatibility Verified
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WHERE TO PLAY

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