By Tyler Wilde

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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

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Hollow Knight’s creators didn’t want to be constrained by the ‘metroidvania’ label, but they accidentally set a standard that every game since—even Silksong—has to reckon with

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Those years of Silksong memes were no joke: Even Borderlands 4 can’t escape its shadow after their first weekends on Steam

Tyler Wilde

16 September 2025

Despite being on Game Pass, Silksong is dominant on Steam.

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(Image credit: Team Cherry)

The weekend after launch is often when games hit their all-time peak Steam concurrents (at least until a big sale or special update), and Borderlands 4 managed to hit 304,398 on Sunday, according to SteamDB’s record keeping.

It’s an impressive achievement for Gearbox’s $70 co-op shooter, but if it puts Borderlands 4 somewhere in the stratosphere, then Hollow Knight: Silksong must be mingling with the aurora borealis, having hit 587,150 concurrent Steam players on the Saturday after it launched.
Those numbers put Borderlands 4 at #46 on the list of all-time highest Steam concurrent peaks, just below Elden Ring Nightreign, and Silksong all the way up at #17, sandwiched between Apex Legends and Path of Exile 2.

Related Articles

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

Silksong has sold more than 3.2 million copies on Steam in less than 2 weeks, industry analyst firm estimates

Hollow Knight: Silksong live launch coverage: It’s finally here

I don’t like to fixate too much on Steam concurrents as a measure of popularity, as they don’t tell the whole story, but they are one of few direct windows into what gamers are doing that we have, and this particular figure underlines just how colossal of a success Silksong has been.

The rest of the story in this case includes the detail that Silksong is much cheaper than Borderlands 4—$20 vs $70—which helps explain why it was able to attract a greater number of Steam players (and why Borderlands 4 is the one at the top of Steam’s best sellers chart, which is based on revenue). Silksong is also a game that should run on just about anything, including a Steam Deck, whereas Borderlands 4 has fairly demanding minimum specs and launched with frame rate and stuttering problems.
On the flip side, though, Silksong is available on Game Pass, while Borderlands 4 isn’t. Last we heard, Game Pass has more than 35 million subscribers. That’s 35 million people who can play Silksong without buying it on Steam, and the subscription service has in the past been blamed for limiting the retail success of games on it. Yet industry analyst GameDiscoverCo estimates that the 2D action platformer has sold 3.2 million copies on the platform so far.
Part of me thought that all those years of memey pining for Silksong—flooding the comments in every gaming showcase with demands for a trailer—were just a passionate but moderately-sized fanbase having some fun. It turns out there really was a Silksong army.

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Looking down on a behemoth like Borderlands from any vantage point is quite an achievement for an indie series. The first Hollow Knight saw 15 million copies sold, according to a recent Bloomberg report, which is obviously nothing to sneeze at, but 94 million copies of Borderlands games had been sold prior to Borderlands 4, according to Take-Two Interactive.
And the Hollow Knight fans were right to anticipate Silksong: We awarded the tough-as-nails indie metroidvania a 90% in our review.
We don’t yet have a review of Borderlands 4, but it’s on the way, and critics who received advanced copies have mostly liked it. In the meantime, we do have lots of Borderlands 4 guides to offer. (Don’t tell the cool kids with their bug game, but Borderlands 4 is more my thing, so that’s where my personal contribution to these numbers lies.)

Tyler Wilde

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Editor-in-Chief, US

Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the ’80s and ’90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call “boomer shooters” now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that’s right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he’s focused on the site’s news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.

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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

Silksong has sold more than 3.2 million copies on Steam in less than 2 weeks, industry analyst firm estimates

Hollow Knight: Silksong live launch coverage: It’s finally here

With Silksong in our hands, Steam’s new reigning wishlist kings are both kind of basket cases: The partially-released Deadlock and lawsuit lightning rod Subnautica 2

Everyone’s heading back to Hollow Knight for one last go before Silksong comes out—the game’s all-time Steam peak is rising as I write this headline

In a week dominated by Silksong and Borderlands, co-op roguelike Shape of Dreams still managed to launch on Steam as an instant top-seller

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