Hollow Knight reaches a new milestone with over 71,000 players concurrently active on Steam

Anticipation for Hollow Knight's sequel led to a record-breaking 71,000 players simultaneously engaging with the game on Steam. Previously, the highest concurrent player count for the game was documented at 56,192 on August 29, 2025. This surge followed the announcement of the sequel titled Silksong.

According to SteamDB, post-announcement at Gamescom, when Silksong was revealed for a September 4, 2025 release, the game drew 21,000 concurrent players. Before these milestones, the game's peak was 20,000 players in May 2022. Besides Steam, Hollow Knight's availability extends to platforms such as the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox, contributing to its widespread popularity.

Following the news of Silksong, data from Alinea Analytics revealed that the sequel received about five million wishlist additions on Steam.

Ari Gibson and William Pellen, co-founders of Team Cherry, discussed Silksong's lengthy seven-year development with Bloomberg. They stated that the project was continuously evolving, attributing the duration to their small team size and the complexity inherent in game development, not due to any developmental hurdles.

"It's all a medium for our creative expression," Gibson stated. The team had no significant setbacks, highlighting the ongoing progress throughout the development. "Being a small team, we understand that creating games is time-intensive," he noted, dispelling any notion of major controversies during production.

The development initially intended Silksong to be an extension of Hollow Knight. However, as work evolved, it grew into an independent game. "Development always brings new concepts, areas, and bosses," Pellen explained, though they chose to conclude the project eventually.