Silksong already has the 18th highest all-time peak player count in Steam history as it draws over 500,000 concurrent players in its first 4 hours

The day is finally upon us. The gates are open. The silk is singing, the bugs are depressed, and after six years of waiting, people are finally playing Hollow Knight: Silksong. A lot of people.

While the Skong-frenzied masses left Steam's store server infrastructure a smoking ruin for a few hours, it only delayed what's become a still-rising flood of first day players. At time of writing, more than 500,000 people are playing Silksong on Steam, and the number's increasing every time I refresh the SteamDB chart.

In its first 24 hours, Silksong's all-time peak player count is already the 18th highest in Steam history. And it'll likely rank higher before the day's out.

As a point of comparison, the original Hollow Knight's Day 1 concurrent player count on Steam peaked at 812 players. In other words, there are roughly 615 times as many people playing Silksong in its first hours than there were playing Hollow Knight at launch. Call me crazy, but I think this one might be a big deal.

While it's hard to say anything definitive without digging into the numbers—SteamDB and similar services are more interested in presenting all-time concurrent player counts than day one peaks—Silksong is clearly one of the biggest indie launches in Steam history.

If we look at its soulslike lineage, Silksong's initial player counts are comparable to Elden Ring's, which SteamDB says pulled in around 560,000 players at launch. The only other indie game I can find with similar day one numbers is Palworld, whose concurrent player count rose from 370,000 to over 850,000 in its first 24 hours. Admittedly, that's a multiplayer game with gun-wielding Pokemon, so it had a bit of an advantage.

We can only speculate how many more records Silksong might set before the week's over. I suspect, however, that its bug kill count is already an all-timer.