Team Cherry’s highly successful Hollow Knight is a behemoth of a franchise and indie title. Kickstarted back in 2014 and launched on the 24th of February 2017, it’s a staple of the videogame industry and an inspiration for indie developers.
It’s accrued an impressive Overwhelmingly Positive score with few negative reviews in sight, making it one of the most highly-rated titles on Steam. It received continued support through free DLC-sized content updates that culminated in Godmaster, a boss gauntlet that made the game down in infamy (in the DARK SOULS way, at least).
All of these feats gave Team Cherry a phenomenal title and an all-time concurrent peak player count of over 20,000 gamers at once during May 2022. But that peak has been beaten (read: smashed) in 2025, eight years after the launch of the game.
There’s no question what made this explosion, and it’s more than mere correlation. gamescom 2025 gave us the news of Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s release date, revealing it would be launching in no less than two weeks’ time. This has been the most highly anticipated title on Steam (and nearly the entire videogame industry, barring Grand Theft Auto VI), with over five million wishlists and dominating the charts for years (aside from the one stint by PocketPair’s Palworld, which dethroned it momentarily right before launch).
The new all-time concurrent player count is nearly 33% bigger than the previous one, sitting at 33,062 players. The goal was set on the 23rd of August, two days after the Silksong release date announcement and the first weekend after gamescom.
Fans are so excited to play the upcoming title that they’ve flocked to the previous in anticipation, and it’s set a record-breaking day for Team Cherry’s history, one sure to be only gracing a fraction of what Silksong will accrue in its launch day on the 4th of September.