Hollow Knight Silksong release live coverage – Steam and eShop outages, early hands-on impressions, and more

And away we go! First things first, it's worth noting that we're not getting a midnight release for Silksong. As you can see from the information above, the wait is just a little bit longer than you'd think. Given that it's taken seven years to get here, though, I think I can spare another few hours or so.

Next up, while you can't pre-order the game, the cost won't be too great. Just the other day, Team Cherry revealed that the Silksong price will be $20, just $5 more than its predecessor.

On top of that, it took three years, but Xbox has finally delivered on its Silksong promise by ensuring Team Cherry's latest game hits Game Pass on day one. Just in case you don't fancy chucking 20 bucks at it.

While we're talking about cool cost-saving actions, Team Cherry also says Silksong will have a free Nintendo Switch 2 edition upgrade at launch, meaning you don't have to pay extra to get the 120hz mode.

It's no wonder No Man's Sky boss Sean Murray is turning the meme tables and begging Team Cherry to let him pay more for Silksong.

Hollow Knight: Silksong Steam backer codes have been sent out this morning. Game releases in about ~22 hours

— @wario64.bsky.social (@wario64.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-09-03T16:06:47.818Z

In news that certainly isn't making me jealous, early backers are already getting their codes. Just the one day to go for the rest of us.

Swiftly moving on to make myself feel better, Silksong publishing chap Matthew Griffin confirms on Twitter that the Hollow Knight follow-up supports ultrawide on screen ratios up to 21:9. See what that looks like in some rather excellent pictures above.

Righto, I'm heading out for the day, but our resident Metroidvania sicko Austin will be along shortly to keep you in the loop with everything Silksong.

I'm taking over from Iain as our resident Hollow Knight head, and I come bearing interesting news. A new world record for Hollow Knight speedrunning was completed just days ago, and as I plug away at my own 112% completion replay, it's absolutely blowing my mind.

One godly player finished every completion milestone in Hollow Knight, including every boss and upgrade, as well as every last Godmaster Pantheon boss, in under 2 hours and 50 minutes. Granted, it was literally one second under, but it still counts, and it's extremely impressive. I shudder to think what people are going to do to Silksong now that the Hollow Knight community is so much bigger today.

In case you missed it, we played Hollow Knight: Silksong!

The demo, anyway. Our Gamescom Hollow Knight: Silksong hands-on preview saw boss man Josh West fall for the game – hard enough for him to want to play about 60 times more. As he said at the time:

"Silksong is building smartly on exceptionally solid foundations, and it's doing so with a greater focus on aggression, decisive action, and proactive decision making. I only played 30 minutes of Hollow Knight Silksong, and now I'm desperate for that to transform into 30 hours."

It does feel surreal to be less than 24 hours away from the release of Silksong.

The long-awaited release date reveal thrilled fans who'd been starved for any meaningful updates, but it scared the crap out of a bunch of other game developers. Ever since the news broke, multiple games have been delayed past early September specifically to avoid getting buried by Silksong – "the GTA of indie games," as one studio put it.

That's it for me tonight. While we get some rest to prepare for the big launch, the countdown continues. Check back tomorrow as we chronicle the release and reception of probably the most-anticipated Metroidvania ever.

For now, one last nugget of knowledge worth pondering: Silksong sent developer Team Cherry back to the drawing board after Hollow Knight, and it's all because new hero Hornet is a lot taller than our beloved Knight.

Happy Hollow Knight: Silksong day to all those who celebrate. Honestly, it's hard for me to believe that its release is actually happening after so many years of waiting.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is available on a lot of platforms today. PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2! It's also available through Game Pass.

Unlike other prominent Game Pass releases, you aren't able to pre-install it ahead of launch. I suspect that this is due to Team Cherry wanted everybody to access the game at the same time, rather than give anybody even a few minutes of a head start.

If you haven't played the original Hollow Knight but are curious about what Silksong is all about, the good news is that Team Cherry designed the upcoming Metroidvania with the hopes it could be anyone's "first Hollow Knight game."

That comes from an old chat with Edge Magazine from a few years back, where Team Cherry also said that one reason the game took 7 years to make is that the team were "comfortable" not knowing what would happen. "The really interesting things are the things you sort of discover along the way," they said.

A heads up if you're looking to avoid any sort of spoiler big and small, Silksong's track listing has been revealed, and, while I'm sure it's banger after banger, the risk of spoilers run big enough with each song title to avoid 'em for now.

It's my absolute pleasure to announce that the Hollow Knight and Silksong subreddits are going for one last ride before the game finally comes out. While the Hollow Knight subreddit is rather tame, albeit excited, those on the Silksong subreddit are going for one last 'Silkpost.' If you've somehow managed to come this far without discovering what that means, consider the most unhinged content you can imagine, shaped by a six-year wait for Silksong.

Since we're reminiscing, I couldn't not share something else that's doing the rounds right now. While Silksong is one of the most anticipated indie releases we've ever seen, getting some folk excited for Hollow Knight proved, erm, rather difficult.

A Reddit post is circulating that features an early Hollow Knight trailer, which isn't to be missed. "Hope he has a backup plan," one poster says, while another chimes in: "Oh great, another side-scroller indie game. As if we don't already have hundreds of them."

I suppose you can't please everyone.

We've spoken about how indie developers in the same release orbit of Silksong have reacted to its imminent release, though even social media accounts behind larger games are getting in on the free engagement. Silkposting is for everyone.

While Team Cherry doesn't chat much, they have been more active as Silksong nears release. Speaking to Bloomberg, co-founder Ari Gibson recalls how the team kept costs low by living off leftover lunches at their tiny office. “My dad would sometimes pop up and give me $20," he says - a treat, because that meant he could get a coffee.

Given that Hollow Knight has shifted 15m copies, though, it's safe to say the team's living arrangements have improves, somewhat.

I imagine that sort of lifestyle is also why they could take so long making sure Silksong was fit for release. Speaking about that to Bloomberg, Team Cherry says "we've been having fun" and could have spent longer developing, dispelling fears of a turbulent creative process. That said, they did think Silksong would have been done in "a year or two."

Two hours to go! To celebrate, I'm off to find a spot of lunch. Y'all be good while I'm gone.

We are in the final hour, gang.

Also, my lunch was lovely, if you were wondering.

Speaking of Reddit earlier, if you've ever wondered if Team Cherry takes a look itself to see what people are Silkposting about, the answer is not really but the odd post makes it back to them.

"It's nice that people are passionate about the game, and that they’ve obviously formed their own strange or very exciting communities around it," co-founder Ari Gibson tells Bloomberg. William Pellen adds: "Feels like we’re going to ruin their fun by releasing the game."

Elden Ring was the go-to community for despair before Silksong took the crown. Question is, who is stepping up next?

As we near Silksong's launch, could I interest you in some DLC chat? Team Cherry has already teased "ambitious" plans and has said, "Hopefully we can achieve some of it." That does sound exciting, but, well, Silksong started as DLC, and I'm not sure I can handle all of this again. I probably could, but not now.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is out! In unrelated news, I wonder if anyone would notice if I left work early . . .

As Austin writes, the cool thing about Silksong is that "everyone is playing it for the first time after waiting more than 6 years," thanks to a lack of review code, leaks, and Early Access. It does mean you'll have to turn to the community for help when you get stuck, but that's kinda cool in the ol' internet age of ours.

Right, who among you are crashing Steam and the Nintendo eShop? Early reports indicate that both storefronts are struggling under the weight of people, including us, trying to buy Silksong.

Also hearing that the Xbox isn't doing too great either if you're trying to buy Silksong from within the console itself.

Maybe, we, uh, should have done pre-orders.

So many people are trying to buy ANTONBLAST that the Steam store crashed 👍🏻

— @tonycomputerentertainment.com (@tonycomputerentertainment.com.bsky.social) 2025-09-04T14:29:51.667Z

We found 'em. The ones responsible for Stream crumbling.

Good news! We're in. A few of us have managed to get the game on Nintendo's eShop. For, uh, work purposes.

What a beautiful sight.

Some thoughts from our games editor, Oscar, who is playing Silksong for work. What you see above is the opening shot, and Hornet's "backstep before turning is right out of Castlevania Symphony of the Night."

Meanwhile, the Steam jokes are already in full swing. Some of y'all are quick, huh?

Can confirm Oscar has reached the first big encounter. "It's just an easy tutorial boss, really," he says, modestly.

Early thoughts - fun! Though, the diagonal dive takes a bit of getting used to if you've been replaying the straightforward pogo in Hollow Knight. Also, getting the hang of aerial positioning may take you a while.

In other news. Before Silksong's release, over 12,300 people turned up to watch "John Silksong" release one last news update, and it was kind of a beautiful moment!

If you haven't seen one of Araraura's videos, he dedicates himself to uploading one video each day to let everyone know if any news has been shared. Most of the time, the answer was a big ol' nope, but we appreciate him for his services anyway.

Another neat detail from Oscar - while Hollow Knight is about digging down into the world, it looks like Silksong is about making your way up. At least, at first it is.

Some stats from Silksong's launch so far. The single-player 2D Metroidvania became the biggest game on Twitch minutes after its launch – with over 360k viewers, it surpassed giants like Dota 2 and GTA 5.

Additionally, despite launching two hours ago during the workday, Silksong has already surpassed Hollow Knight's all-time concurrent Steam player record.

Mind you, some stats I'm less sure of. After just two hours, Silksong racked up 1,500 "Overwhelmingly Positive" Steam reviews, so either y'all are really fast or those reviews don't actually mean much.

Here's another, more surprising audience that Silksong has managed to win over: pirates.

Silksong was spotted on the usual pirate sites pretty quickly after launch, but because the game is good, affordable, and available DRM-free, a non-trivial volume of would-be pirates have openly committed to buying the game legitimately. It's just anecdotes within a small portion of the game's audience, but it's an interesting look at the game's reach and the motivations behind pirate culture.