Hollow Knight Silksong Debuts Amid Record Steam Demand and Debate

Team Cherry’s long-awaited sequel Hollow Knight Silksong launched on September 4, 2025 to huge demand and heated debate, drawing record crowds and an intense conversation about its difficulty. The game has attracted roughly half a million concurrent players on Steam at its peak and topped its predecessor’s own high-water marks, even as some users and critics say its early sections and boss runbacks are harsher than expected.

Silksong places players in the agile role of Hornet as she climbs the kingdom of Pharloom, combining vertical level design with fast combat and a suite of new traversal tools. The release sparked massive traffic that reportedly caused outages on multiple storefronts during launch week. According to SteamDB and other tracking services, Silksong’s peak concurrent count approached 587,000, while the original Hollow Knight has seen a renewed surge with a new all-time Steam concurrent high near 93,000.

Player reaction has been broadly positive overall, with high review scores and large audiences, but a vocal minority has criticized specific systems. Complaints collected from Steam reviews and social forums center on lengthy runbacks between benches and bosses,...