The day has finally come, and for some, it still doesnโt feel quite real that Hollow Knight: Silksong is now available to play. Fans have been kept waiting for an extended period, with some doubting the game would ever be released after its numerous delays and limited information. The first official trailer was released all the way back in 2019; there was even a playable demo at E3 that year — but it took another six years to actually release. And with all the excitement around this new sequel, there is also a feeling that time never passed and nothing skipped a beat.
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In just a few hours since Hollow Knight: Silksongโs release earlier today, the game has seen a rapid rise in players. According to SteamDB, in the first hour of release on Steam, it already surpassed 100,000 players. (UPDATE: It’s now risen to over 535,000 players, putting Silksong in 18th place on Steam’s all-time highest player count chart. Original article continues.) The rush to play Silksong appears to be shared across all its platforms, with players posting screenshots of services like the Nintendo eShop crashing and undergoing maintenance to handle the massive influx of purchases. Itโs pretty impressive looking at the enthusiasm for the series, which has managed to keep its candle burning throughout its extended development.
Silksong’s Player Count Will Increase After Video Game Stores Stop Crashing
Memes have already begun flooding social media as players rush to buy the game all at once, with some feeling like the final hurdle to finally getting their hands on the game is simply downloading the game. Nintendo was forced to implement maintenance on the eShop in response to the surge of consumers, Steam is up-and-running for many but not all people, and things are looking better for PSN and Xbox Game Pass, though of course that could ebb and flow throughout this first day of release. Funnily enough, Twitch streamers hoping to start showing the game to their audience were displaying crash messages in their thumbnails instead of the game itself.
Knowing all this makes Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s player count even more impressive, given there’s potentially another 100,000 players waiting to just start the game. It begs the question, in spite of being available on a service like Game Pass, just how many copies will Silksong sell? In the long-run, presumably in the 10 millions, but in these first few days, perhaps a few million alone.
Right now, these preliminary numbers hold up compared to some of the most-played Steam indie games of all time. Stardew Valley never broke 100,000 concurrent players until last year with update 1.6, and Terraria only surpassed this milestone a few years into its release as well. Silksong coming right out of the gate swinging like this is truly mind-blowing in light of all of the things that should be holding it back. I canโt wait to see what its final player numbers will look like once all the issues accessing the game have been resolved.
Have you managed to download and play Silksong successfully yet? What are your first impressions of the game? Was it worth the wait?
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image courtesy of 20th Century Studios
