7 Yrs♥$✓#
ThomasE
7 Yrs♥$✓#
This is my 1000th post here. :)
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GamingSlime
7 Yrs✓#
Congrats! Here's to a thousand more
7 Yrs♥$✓#
ThomasE7 Yrs♥$✓#
Thanks!
Took me almost 8 years to post this often, so expect me back here with another 1000 post anniversary in 2033-ish :)
7 Yrs♥$✓#
ThomasE7 Yrs♥$✓#
Yet another game trying to escape the Silksong wave: Demonschool postponed to November.
I thought this quote was funny:
I wonder - just as a person who enjoys statistics - if Steam/Gog/... can see sales numbers generally drop at the moment because many people are going to buy Silksong and won't buy any other game just days before its release.
I also wonder how many copies Silksong is going to sell in the first, let's say, 24h. Just out of curiosity. On the one side extremely hyped game, most wishlisted on Steam for many years, etc etc. On the other side not really everyone's cup of tea, metroidvanias do generally not reach as many players as several other genres, not a multiplayer title. I would like to guess4 million - edit on 2025-09-01: because of 20 Dollar/Euro price tag I update my guess to 4.5 million - copies within 24h of release. Anyone want to make a different guess and then we can see who "won" in 2 weeks? :)
I thought this quote was funny:
we would not be doing Demonschool any favors by wading into waters we can clearly see are blood red
I wonder - just as a person who enjoys statistics - if Steam/Gog/... can see sales numbers generally drop at the moment because many people are going to buy Silksong and won't buy any other game just days before its release.
I also wonder how many copies Silksong is going to sell in the first, let's say, 24h. Just out of curiosity. On the one side extremely hyped game, most wishlisted on Steam for many years, etc etc. On the other side not really everyone's cup of tea, metroidvanias do generally not reach as many players as several other genres, not a multiplayer title. I would like to guess
2 Yrs✓#
kSlank
2 Yrs✓#
HEHEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA
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kSlank2 Yrs✓#
What's next, 2000?
6 Yrs♥✓#
Illusera
6 Yrs♥✓#
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rfrk
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hellobion✓#
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✓#Um how is xbox still around I though they did not make consoles anymore.
7 Yrs♥$✓#
ThomasE7 Yrs♥$✓#
So, here we are now 24h after the release of Silksong. I guess it might still take a while before we get to know any sales numbers. I was wondering how often the game would sell in that time frame. See the post a bit higher up.
The peak so far on Steam were 540,547 concurrent players just now. I'm sure this number will continue to rise and peak on Sunday evening but that's outside the first 24h then.
I would claim it's a fair estimate that half a million concurrent players equal AT LEAST 1.2 million sales on Steam.
Silksong is (seems like) a game well suited for consoles and handhelds and I would therefore assume it sold well on PS, XBOX, and Switch. As there is zero information on sales/concurrent players for these plattforms/stores I just have to guess: I'd say another 2 million copies sold there.
And possibly a few ten or hundred thousands copies via GOG and Epic, especially since buying games on Steam was unavailable for like 2 hours after release and at least GOG was doing okay in that time.
Still, my 4.5 million guess might have been too high. 4.5 million copies in 24h would make it the forth most successful video game of all times (as measured with the metric "sales within 24h"). And it's a single player metroidvania after all that's available on Gamepass and has very little to zero official marketing. But yeah, I want to believe the hype carried the game. :)
I asked ChatGPT about it (just now) and it said "But 4.5M in 24h is essentially impossible for an indie title" and "A more realistic best-case: 500k–1M in 24h". Okay, 500k is too low obviously (see player count) but yeah, would <1 million people buying a game on Steam really crash the shop for 2h? Aren't there literally hundred thousand copies of games sold concurrently during the big sales?
What do you think? Way too late for you to enter the contest that comes with a surprise cash pool of 100 Euros that I am going to win confidently as the only official participant but hey, what is your guess?
Btw sorry for my many posts about Silksong. I'm not trying to fanboy, although I am a fanboy for HK and potentially for Silksong too (have only played for 1h so far), but I am genuinely just interested in the statistics/the hype/the situation.
The peak so far on Steam were 540,547 concurrent players just now. I'm sure this number will continue to rise and peak on Sunday evening but that's outside the first 24h then.
I would claim it's a fair estimate that half a million concurrent players equal AT LEAST 1.2 million sales on Steam.
Silksong is (seems like) a game well suited for consoles and handhelds and I would therefore assume it sold well on PS, XBOX, and Switch. As there is zero information on sales/concurrent players for these plattforms/stores I just have to guess: I'd say another 2 million copies sold there.
And possibly a few ten or hundred thousands copies via GOG and Epic, especially since buying games on Steam was unavailable for like 2 hours after release and at least GOG was doing okay in that time.
Still, my 4.5 million guess might have been too high. 4.5 million copies in 24h would make it the forth most successful video game of all times (as measured with the metric "sales within 24h"). And it's a single player metroidvania after all that's available on Gamepass and has very little to zero official marketing. But yeah, I want to believe the hype carried the game. :)
I asked ChatGPT about it (just now) and it said "But 4.5M in 24h is essentially impossible for an indie title" and "A more realistic best-case: 500k–1M in 24h". Okay, 500k is too low obviously (see player count) but yeah, would <1 million people buying a game on Steam really crash the shop for 2h? Aren't there literally hundred thousand copies of games sold concurrently during the big sales?
What do you think? Way too late for you to enter the contest that comes with a surprise cash pool of 100 Euros that I am going to win confidently as the only official participant but hey, what is your guess?
Btw sorry for my many posts about Silksong. I'm not trying to fanboy, although I am a fanboy for HK and potentially for Silksong too (have only played for 1h so far), but I am genuinely just interested in the statistics/the hype/the situation.
6 Yrs♥✓#
Illusera6 Yrs♥✓#
Looks like the steam sales peaked higher since this was posted. Whether it met your projections or not, (I don’t have the data for other storefronts) still an amazing release.
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ThomasE7 Yrs♥$✓#
Yeah, definitely a huge success for Team Cherry. I'm very happy for them.
Hollow Knight had peaked (before Silksong's release date got announced) at ~20,000 concurrent players on Steam. Silksong peaked at almost 29 times that. O_o
Two random notes:
Silksong peaked a bit "before its time", though. I sometimes look at how games are doing on SteamDB and they almost always peak on the first Sunday evening (CEST) after release. Of course, there are situations where a game will peaks later. But single player games typically reach their high on Sunday 5pm (+/- 1h). Silksong peaked on Saturday 5pm (CEST). I would contribute that to the hype around Silksong and that there's likely a lot of players who will try it out but bounce of rather quickly (for example, because they are not fans of metroidvanias).
Hollow Knight is reaching new peaks because of Silksong. Seems like many people want to first (re-)play HK before starting the sequel. Hollow Knight had previously peaked at a bit over 20,000, yesterday it had reached almost 100,000 players. That could also mean a second wave incoming for Silksong in a few days or weeks. Will most likely not go beyond the current all-time peak though.
7 Yrs♥$✓#
ThomasE7 Yrs♥$✓#
A first estimation about the sales numbers. Only an estimation but the best thing we've got: 3.2 million sales on Steam in < 2 weeks
Other noteworthy info from the article:
Silksong sold 69 times more often than the next best selling metroidvania released in 2025 (Steam numbers)
and
"The overlap with OG Hollow Knight players is a whopping 79%" which could explain why people record relatively fast times for the game on HLTB even though the map and game in general are supposedly very big.
---
Personally I'm still in Act 1 with 19h in. I'm enjoying the game immensively. The hardest bosses so far for me were Sister Splinter and Savage Beastfly for which I needed maybe something like ~20 +/- tries each. I beat Sister Splinter on the very same day that the patch that nerfed her was released. In my heart I hope I still beat the original version of her but who knows :)
I haven't yet beaten the Second Skarrgard fight in Hunter's March. That one is giving me a lot of trouble at the moment.
Currently I have zero idea where to go to next (the boss mentioned before is optional). I do not mind running around in metroidvanias to look for the next path. It is just that in the last idk 5h I always had so many paths available that I could seemingly just make progress whereever I went and now I do not see any clear path at the moment. I don't want to google it though. At least not yet.
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edit: The newsletter linked in the article is actually also worth a read:
Other noteworthy info from the article:
Silksong sold 69 times more often than the next best selling metroidvania released in 2025 (Steam numbers)
and
"The overlap with OG Hollow Knight players is a whopping 79%" which could explain why people record relatively fast times for the game on HLTB even though the map and game in general are supposedly very big.
---
Personally I'm still in Act 1 with 19h in. I'm enjoying the game immensively. The hardest bosses so far for me were Sister Splinter and Savage Beastfly for which I needed maybe something like ~20 +/- tries each. I beat Sister Splinter on the very same day that the patch that nerfed her was released. In my heart I hope I still beat the original version of her but who knows :)
I haven't yet beaten the Second Skarrgard fight in Hunter's March. That one is giving me a lot of trouble at the moment.
Currently I have zero idea where to go to next (the boss mentioned before is optional). I do not mind running around in metroidvanias to look for the next path. It is just that in the last idk 5h I always had so many paths available that I could seemingly just make progress whereever I went and now I do not see any clear path at the moment. I don't want to google it though. At least not yet.
---
edit: The newsletter linked in the article is actually also worth a read:
So, with 2D Metroidvania sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong already having ~6 million players, by GDCo’s estimates - >3.2 million copies on Steam and 500k+ each on PlayStation and Switch 1/2, as well as ~1.5 million downloads on Xbox Game Pass [...]