A Hollow Knight: Silksong phishing scam is pretending to offer early access to the game

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Emails pertaining to be from Team Cherry contain several red flags

Hollow Knight: Silksong
(Image credit: Team Cherry)

A YouTuber has warned fellow content creators of a Hollow Knight: Silksong phishing scam that's appeared in their inbox. 

As highlighted by @JohnWolfeYT on Twitter, an email - supposedly from Hollow Knight developer Team Cherry - is currently doing the rounds, offering players early access to the highly anticipated sequel. 

Thanks to a screenshot shared by the YouTuber, we can see the email which claims to be sent by the PR manager of the game's developer and says things like: "I have watched your channel for a while and I think it is perfect to promote Hollow Knight." 

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"Our new game Hollow Knight: Silksong is coming out soon," the email continues, "in this regard, we would like to offer you cooperation. We'll give you access to the game before its official release, so you can be one of the first to play it and record a video review on your YouTube channel." Thankfully, JohnWolfe saw right through this scam and has now shared various red flags present in the email to make others aware of the scam.

In a Twitter thread, JohnWolfe explained that the email contains typical phishing language, such as not addressing the person the email is being sent to by name. They then point out that the email was sent from an email domain that features '.tech' at the end of it. A quick search of the official Team Cherry website reveals that the studio's domain actually ends with '.com.' The website also reveals that the person claiming to be from the studio isn't actually listed anywhere on the company's employee page. 

The rest of JohnWolfe's thread goes into more detail about how to spot which offers are legitimate, with several other examples given for games such as The Day Before, The Outlast Trials, Starfield, and more. With all the excitement surrounding Hollow Knight: Silksong, you'd be forgiven for getting ahead of yourself and blindly accepting the offer. Thanks to this YouTuber's thread though, this scam probably won't get very far. 

Want to know what else we can look forward to this year? Take a look at our new games 2023 list. 

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.  

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