Hollow Knight Sees Massive Player Jump on Steam Ahead of Silksong Release

Hollow Knight: Silksong on Steam.

Hollow Knight is having a serious moment right now — and it’s all thanks to one bit of news fans have been waiting years to hear. Following the long-anticipated release date reveal for its sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong, the 2017 indie classic from Team Cherry has seen its player numbers shoot through the roof. Turns out, the best way to get ready for Silksong is to dive back into the original adventure.

The hype really kicked in right after Gamescom 2025, where Team Cherry confirmed Silksong will finally launch on September 4, 2025, across PC, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. From that moment, Hollow Knight’s activity surged — to the point where, over the weekend, it kept smashing its own concurrent player records on Steam. That’s not something you see often from a single-player indie title eight years after release.

On August 24, the game hit a new all-time peak of 39,356 concurrent players — more than double its previous best of around 20,000 back in May 2022.

For comparison, in July 2025, the game was peaking at about 13,000 players, and just before the Silksong news, daily highs sat between 10k and 15k. As per Steamdb, that’s a jaw-dropping 199% spike in just days — roughly 26,000 extra players jumping in compared to last month’s average.

What makes this even more impressive is that Hollow Knight isn’t a live-service or multiplayer game constantly fed new content. It’s a single-player, story-driven Metroidvania — the kind of game people revisit because it’s that good. Seeing it this alive in 2025 says a lot about how much the community still treasures it, and how electric the buzz for Silksong really is.

Team Cherry has even spoken about the wait, making it clear this wasn’t a case of “development hell.” Instead, they said they were “just having too much fun making it.” Given the current excitement, that patience seems to have paid off — the sequel’s announcement has breathed fresh life into Hollow Knight’s global player base.