Silksong Stole My Sleep and 5 Million Other Player
Hollow Knight: Silksong hit 5 million players and 3 million Steam sales in days, crashing storefronts after its 2025 launch.
I finally understand why people call Hollow Knight: Silksong a storefront-breaking event. On September 4, 2025, I sat down with snacks, tea, and the misplaced confidence of a person who had beaten the first game twice. By the time I blinked, Steam was wheezing, the Nintendo eShop was creaking, and the Microsoft Store looked like it had seen a ghost. Team Cherry did not just release a sequel. They released a traffic jam with a soundtrack.
Now it is 2026, and the numbers are still ridiculous. According to The Alinea Insight Newsletter, Silksong passed 5 million players across platforms after launch. Over 3 million of those were Steam sales in the first three days alone. That translated to more than $50 million from Steam in that tiny window. I contributed one copy, several sleepless nights, and a growing suspicion that Hornet is faster than my reaction time and my life choices.
Here is the part where my brain makes the Windows error noise. More than a million players came through Xbox Game Pass on console. The game was wishlisted by around 5 million Steam users before launch, which means a small country’s worth of people were refreshing store pages like it was a medical emergency. Most Steam sales came from the US and China, with Russia, Japan, and Brazil as other major markets. Suddenly my lonely little obsession had a global support group.
Metric
Number
My reaction
Total players across platforms
5+ million
That is a lot of broken benches
Steam sales in first 3 days
3+ million
Team Cherry can afford more bells
Steam revenue in that period
$50+ million
I chose the wrong career
Xbox Game Pass players
1+ million
Game Pass did numbers
OpenCritic average
94
Highest on the aggregator in 2025
I also learned that 78% of Silksong players on Steam and 81% on PlayStation also owned the first Hollow Knight. So yes, I am a statistic. I am not a unique snowflake; I am a predictable sequel buyer with a controller and a problem. The overlap suggests something sweet, actually. A huge chunk of this audience is not just chasing hype. We are longtime fans who waited through the original 2019 announcement, the originally targeted 2023 launch, and the long silence that followed. I aged. My backlog grew. My patience became a boss fight with multiple phases.
When the game finally arrived in 2025, it did not just sell. It overwhelmed storefronts. Steam, Nintendo eShop, and Microsoft Store all felt the surge, which is a very fancy way of saying the internet briefly forgot how to queue. For an indie game, that is absurd in the best way. For Team Cherry, it must have felt like throwing a small party and watching the entire city show up with chairs.
Critics were kind, too. The game currently holds an average score of 94 on OpenCritic, the highest on that aggregator in 2025. I would like to say I was surprised, but I was too busy being impaled by things with too many legs. The praise makes sense. The art, the music, the movement, the sheer confidence of Hornet’s dash: it all feels like Team Cherry sharpened every tool from the first game and then handed me a harder exam.
Speaking of exams, the early difficulty has been a talking point. Team Cherry is preparing Silksong’s inaugural patch, and apart from bug fixes, it is set to address fan feedback about the high difficulty in the early stages. The changes are described as slight balancing adjustments. I am cautiously optimistic. Slight is a dangerous word in a game where a normal enemy can feel like a tax audit with wings. Still, I appreciate that the developers are listening. In 2026, a patch that smooths the opening hours could help new players stay long enough to discover why the rest of us are obsessed.
Will I replay it after the patch? Absolutely. Will I pretend I am calm when I hear a bell? No. Silksong may have launched in 2025, but its 5 million players, its 3 million Steam sales, its $50 million opening, and its 94 score have made it a 2026 conversation that refuses to end. I am one of those players. I am tired. I am impressed. And I am still not sure whether Hornet is the hero or the reason my thumbs hurt.
If Team Cherry releases more updates, I will be there. If they release DLC, I will complain about the price and buy i