Hollow Knight: Silksong Release – All You Need to Know

I still remember playing the original Hollow Knight back in 2017. A tiny indie game from a small studio, and it ended up becoming one of the best metroidvania experiences ever made. Tight combat, haunting music, and a world that kept pulling me deeper into Hallownest.

I’ve been waiting ever since for the sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong. It was teased, delayed, turned into a meme, and at one point people joked it wasn’t even real anymore. But the wait is finally over. Silksong is here.

Release Date, Platforms, and Price

Hollow Knight: Silksong launched on September 4, 2025. Team Cherry released it across all major platforms at the same time, which feels rare these days.

You can play it on:

• PC (Windows, macOS, Linux) through Steam, GOG, and Epic

• PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5

• Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

• Nintendo Switch and Switch 2

The game came out as a standard edition only. No collector’s bundles, no deluxe packs.

For a sequel this big, twenty bucks feels like a steal when most new releases go for three times the price.

What Happened at Launch

When Silksong finally launched, it didn’t just make people happy, it also broke a few things. Steam and the Nintendo eShop both struggled, with folks reporting errors and broken carts as everyone tried to grab the game at once. Gamespot even published an article about the release crashing Steam and the eShop.

On Steam, the numbers were huge. During its first weekend, Silksong peaked at 570,000+ concurrent players. Data from SteamDB shows it’s one of the biggest indie launches ever. Not bad for a little bug game that cost less than dinner out.

Not everything went smoothly. Many Chinese-speaking players slammed the Simplified Chinese translation for feeling off. Team Cherry admitted they’d missed the mark and promised fixes in a future patch.

So launch day was messy, but it made one thing clear. People had been waiting a very long time for this one.

DRM-Free Copy

One detail I like about Silksong is that you can grab it DRM-free. If you buy it on GOG, there’s no launcher check, no always-online requirement, and no activation hoops. Once you download it, it’s yours.

That might not sound like a big deal, but it’s something I care about. It means the game will still run years from now, even if accounts or servers change. In a time when most games come tied to online checks, this feels refreshing.

What’s New This Time

You’re not playing as the Knight anymore. Silksong puts Hornet in the spotlight. She moves quicker, jumps higher, and the combat feels sharper right away.

The story takes place in a whole new kingdom called Pharloom. It’s brighter, more varied, with areas like coral forests and mossy grottos.

Some systems are new too:

• Quests: NPCs hand out tasks that push exploration forward

• Currencies: Rosaries and Shell Shards add new ways to pay and repair

• Tools: Hornet can craft and repair tools, giving more options in combat

• Journal: A log that keeps track of your discoveries and progress

It’s still Hollow Knight at heart, but with enough changes to make it feel fresh instead of just more of the same.

Wrap-Up

So after years of waiting, Hollow Knight: Silksong finally arrived. It crashed a few storefronts, set records on Steam, and gave us a whole new world to explore with Hornet. The price is fair, the DRM-free option is there if you want it, and Pharloom already feels like a place worth getting lost in.

It was not a perfect launch, but it did not need to be. The important part is that Silksong is real, and now we get to play it.