I just went to check to see how Silksong was doing on the Steam playercount charts, thinking that we were past its peak and I could write up what it maxed out at. Wrong, those numbers are still climbing as we speak, and there’s an adjacent story here that also in this very moment, the original Hollow Knight is hitting new max highs right now.
Silksong just passed up yesterday’s 562,000 concurrent Steam playercount record, a stunning number for a $20 indie game, though obviously boosted by its mythological status after seven years of waiting from fans. If it peaks on Sunday, like some games do, it could push closer to 600,000, if not pass it.
That is more that a 500% increase from the max Hollow Knight players but again, Hollow Knight is setting its own records minute by minute. As I write this, the original Hollow Knight, released eight years ago, has 85,000 concurrent players, which is four times as many as its previous peak back in 2022 (I believe it may have been on sale?).
As it stands, Silksong still does not have any scored critic reviews in on Metacritic due to the fact that no advance copies went out to critics. As a longer game, there should not be any for another day or two, at the very least. But fan scores are starting to come in, and it has a great 8.9 on Metacritic. It has an 82% positive on Steam, down from Hollow Knight’s 90%, and there are a fair number of complaints that Silksong is a lot harder than Hollow Knight, though most would not view that as a negative.
The amount of quality games this year has become rather absurd, with Silksong now joining the GOTY conversation alongside Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince, Death Stranding 2, Donkey Kong Bananza and others. Whatever Metacritic score it ends up with obviously does not mean it will win or lose, but everyone is winning due to the fact that this game they’ve waited seven years for is out, and it’s good.
I will keep an eye on the playercounts for both Silksong and Hollow Knight to see how high they can go this weekend (also, it’s 10 AM ET here), and look at that, both have added a few thousand more players by the time I finished this piece. Rocketships, both of them.
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