The splash damage caused by Hollow Knight: Silksong’s massive launch impact has spread beyond huge Steam concurrents and struggling storefronts to the parts of the internet where video game pirates hang out — and there something interesting is happening: the pirates are urging each other to buy the game instead of downloading the cracked version.
Team Cherry’s hotly anticipated Hollow Knight sequel finally came out on September 4, 2025 priced $20, six years after it was announced, and instantly crashed storefronts including Steam.
As the storefronts recovered, player numbers swelled to the point where Silksong hit an incredible launch day peak of 535,213 concurrent players on Steam, enough to make it the 18th most-played game ever on Valve’s platform. The true player count across all platforms will be much higher.
Silksong also launched DRM-free on GOG, so it was no surprise to see a cracked version available to download in the hours after launch. What was a surprise was the response from some veteran video game pirates, who urged their peers to support Team Cherry and buy the game instead.
“First game I’ve bought day of release in a decade probably,” said pyrokzg on the piracy subreddit in response to a thread upvoted 7,000 times. “Not even the decade for me. It’s the very first,” added Vamsi-Thopu.
So, why is this happening? Clearly, there is a huge amount of goodwill from across the internet directed at Team Cherry, the small indie developer that saw the original Hollow Knight blow up to such an extent that it was able to take its merry time with this ambitious sequel.
But there’s also a feeling that Team Cherry does things the right way. For a start, there’s a DRM-free version available at launch, but the Australian studio was also keen to honor the promises it made with its original Hollow Knight Kickstarter all those years ago. There’s even a free upgrade for the Nintendo Switch 2 version. In short, Team Cherry are the good guys, and the feeling is they deserve their success.
“It’s a 3-4 person team that has done right by their fans at every turn,” said No-Shape6053, also on the piracy subreddit. “Making sure the PC release is DRM free. Making sure all original backers of Hollow Knight get Silksong free on their choice of platform. This is a time where if we can afford to support them, we should.”
“Support the devs if you can, they deserve it,” added iTzNowbie. There’s plenty more where that came from, too. “The only game I will feel bad if I ever pirated it,” said beastfire24. “Hey the game is pretty cheap. This one, we should not pirate,” said Sythrin.
Interestingly, some have expressed surprise at the collective urge not to pirate Silksong, which itself prompted a discussion about why this is happening with Silksong but hasn’t happened with similarly beloved indie games in the past.
“Usually people here claim that the title, price, or the indie status makes no difference to them, but I guess that Silksong is just that respected,” offered MixaLv.
“I’m surprised too,” added ALIIERTx. “Many times people are like, ‘I don’t care if I pirate from indie developer,’ but on this one everyone is pretty defensive against piracy. I’m fascinated.”
Responses to this reinforce the Team Cherry angle. “Team Cherry has built themselves an amazing reputation,” suggested Someone_Existing_1. “Because they’re only a three-person studio, they can keep their games super cheap due to far less employees needing pay. Also they aren’t greedy f***s like most companies, so their DLCs are all free and there’s no microtransactions or online-only bulls**t.”
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Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Hollow Knight: Silksong developers Team Cherry are “working to improve” the game’s Simplified Chinese translation, following “quality issues” which have seen its Steam user reviews from those speaking the language drop to “mixed”.
As you can easily see thanks to Steam’s recent introduction of language-specific review splits, the mixed reviews are unique to the 6,382 people who’ve left verdicts in Simplified Chinese so far. For every other language, including Traditional Chinese, the impressions being left are either mostly or overwhelmingly positive, though it’s worth noting that a sizeable number are more shows of support for Team Cherry than proper reviews, being based on less than an hour’s playtime.
After an exceptionally long wait, Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on the Switch and Switch 2, and perhaps one of the most pleasantly surprising aspects of its launch is its price.
You’re looking at $19.99 / £16.75 / €19.99 / ¥2300 for the new release which, given the sheer length of its development and presumptions around its runtime, seems very reasonable indeed. Some folks, however, think that Team Cherry has legitimately priced the game too low, and therefore may be distorting players’ expectations regarding what a $20 game should look like (thanks, Eurogamer).
In case you missed it, a plucky little game no one had heard anything about whatsoever arrived yesterday. Hollow Knight: Silksong. Yeah, I know, it’s news to me too. Anyway, what’s also news is that Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone has a voice acting cameo in Skong. Though, he’s being all coy about revealing when and where you can hear his dulcet tones.
This came to light because of some valiant folks who’ve already made it to Silksong’s end credits, presumably having pulled mammoth sessions last night, as our own Ollie did to provide you lot with some helpful early game walkthroughs. Or, you know, they’ve gone to the extras bit of the main menu and pressed the button that rolls the credits.
Star Wars Outlaws, released on 4th September 2025, is the latest in a long line of Switch 2 titles utilising the Game-Key Card physical release.
It’s safe to say that most folks are under the assumption that cost is likely the driving factor behind the use of the Game-Key Card medium, with Nintendo supposedly only offering 64GB cartridges to third-party developers.
Most of the time, a game based on a successful manga is made after the anime adaptation has been airing for some time, but that wasn’t the case with Kaiju No. 8 The Game. (You can read our hands-on impressions here, by the way.) It tells its own story within creator Naoya Matsumoto’s world, as well as referencing pivotal events from the mainline narrative, and is one of the rare instances in which the game and anime were being developed in parallel.
“When this game began its development, the manga was only getting started,” says Kaiju No. 8 The Game’s Producer Shinya Fujita. “So there was still a lot of information that we didn’t know yet. And also at the same time, the manga was to be adapted into an anime as well. So this made it very difficult.”
The team started working on Kaiju No. 8 The Game more than two years ago, and the anime only started airing in mid-April last year. This meant that the game development team and the anime production effort (which involved both Production I.G and Studio Khara) were both exploring what this world would look like in action and how best to bring the characters – and kaiju – to life.
Akatsuki Games “often referred to the manga for unreleased characters, weapons, and locations,” reflects Fujita. The team also had access to Naoya Matsumoto, the writer and illustrator of the manga, and “his advice and support were crucial,” confirms Fujita, who goes on to say that he was “surprised by his deep knowledge of game development and respect for the process.”
That’s not to say that Akatsuki Games was disconnected from the anime. As its production moved ahead, the team were able to work with both studios on specific things. Fujita says that while his team looked to the manga for their character designs, they received invaluable help for the weapon designs from Production I.G, who “were able to create references that were very detailed and easy to understand”, and leveraged the expertise they’d gleaned from the likes of Ghost in the Shell. The team also received references for kaiju designs from Studio Khara, which had been brought onboard to oversee the kaiju designs in the anime; a natural fit given this is the studio established by Hideki Anno and responsible for the Rebuild of Evangelion films.
The work on background designs also lined up with the anime. “We received a lot of art boards from Production I.G,” says 3D Artist Kazushi Matsumoto. “Every day we’d be checking what the new materials were. In the early stages sometimes we’d find that our 3D design didn’t match the art board so we’d have to remake it. It’s not like we had all the reference material we needed in the first place – we had to work closely with Production I.G. In the case that we had exactly the same location as the anime, we’d have Production I.G review our designs as well.”
One area that was completely separate, however, was the audio side of the game. “I deeply admire the anime’s exceptional music,” says Sound Artist Yasuaki Iwata, “and the sound team is inspired by the anime’s music and takes a reference [from it] while creating entirely new compositions tailored specifically for the game experience.”
“Since music strongly reflects a composer’s individuality,” adds Sound Director Mitsuhiro Hikino, “we carefully structured our team. We were fortunate to have experienced game composers with extensive game experience and theatrical music composers who excel at creating music that complements visuals… We centered our music around genres like Japanese digital rock and used instrumentation familiar to fans of the IP and its culture. We deliberately kept melodies subtle to prevent the music from overpowering the experience, instead allowing it to complement and enhance the impressive visuals.”
Producing work that stands up next to the excellent anime was obviously important to the team, but so too was ensuring that the manga’s author, Naoya Matsumoto, was happy with their vision for his world. And sometimes that meant changing tack. Japanese mobile games often have provocative new outfits for their characters that players can acquire through their gacha system, incentivising them to invest more time and/or money in the game.
“Sexy costumes… [are] pretty common in the Japanese mobile game industry,” says Art Director Yuya Kuroyabu. “When we proposed this plan, Matsumoto-sensei said ‘well, no – this [approach] is not for this IP.’ So we studied the IP concept again and tried to come up with some unique designs for this game.” The upshot is that the character outfits stay true to the fact that they’re all soldiers in the Japan Anti-Kaiju Defense Force or CLOZER (a specialised military outfit central to the story), keeping this game more closely aligned with the manga and anime, and reworking the concept of ‘fan service’ in the process. “The essence of the design,” concludes Kuroyabu, “is the military style.”
Most important of all, however, was getting Matsumoto’s blessing for Kaiju No. 8 The Game’s original storyline. It takes place at a specific time in the manga and anime’s arc, and features all the main characters. “We, the game developers, proposed ideas [to Matsumoto-sensei],” Producer Shinya Fujita explains. “We wanted to create a unique setting for the game,” so came up with the concept that Kaiju Dimensional Gates were opening up around the globe, triggering an all-in response from anti-kaiju forces. “Then, building on to the Kaiju Dimensional Gate setting,” Fujita continues, “we created the original story and then created the character Sagan Shinomiya.”
“Sagan is a very important character,” Fujita explains, “because she’s the only game-original character connected to the anime/manga cast.” Given how central Kikoru and Isao Shinomiya are to Kaiju No. 8’s story, it genuinely is a pretty big deal for the game to introduce Kikoru’s non-blood related sister. “We didn’t actually have any instructions from Matsumoto-sensei,” says Art Director Yuya Kuroyabu on whether the team had free reign to create the character, “but we proposed ideas and spent a lot of time communicating.”
This included pivoting away from what Fujita describes as “a completely different character design” to find the current version which “was the better fit for this military setting.” “Because she plays such an important role, we wanted to make sure we get her right,” he concludes.
“Sagan is a very important character, because she’s the only game-original character connected to the anime/manga cast.” – Shinya Fujita
Sagan is joined by a couple of other new characters – Chester Lochburn, CLOZER’s strategist, and Suited, CLOZER’s weapons development guru – and the team have been quite clever in how they approach their gameplay designs. Characters in this game fall into three broad categories – Attacker, Support and Defender – and as you might imagine, given their overwhelming offensive power, many of the core cast from the manga/anime fit into the Attacker category. It makes sense, then, for the new characters to help bulk out the numbers in the other roles so that players can build well-rounded squads focused on their favourite characters.
With Matsumoto on board for the story and new characters, there was still the question of how to handle series protagonist Kafka Hibino. After all, he’s simultaneously one of the weakest and strongest characters in the manga/anime. The team have followed Matsumoto’s lead by keeping this duality and allowing Hibino to use his Ultimate to transform into Kaiju No. 8 mid-fight, going from a pistol packing support player to an absolute beast. It really is binary too, as his transformation completely replaces his human moves with kaiju ones and strips him of his pistol in favour of bare knuckle brawling. “After transforming, he gains access to powerful abilities like AOE attacks and high-damage Ultimate, allowing players to truly feel his strength,” says Producer Shinya Fujita.
The team have even created a standalone Kaiju No. 8 character that starts in Kafka’s transformed state. “While this version can’t equip weapons like other characters,” Fujita comments, “he possesses incredibly powerful base stats even without them. Pretty much what this means is that in the game you can skip the process of acquiring or leveling up weapons; he’s simply strong from the get go.” Even so, balance is key. “We want to avoid situations where a specific character becomes almost mandatory to progress,” explains Fujita, “or where players can’t freely use the characters they genuinely want to play.”
This is also reflected in the game’s monetisation strategy – which is always a thorny topic when it comes to live service titles, but particularly those with heavy gacha components. “Our goal is for fans to enjoy playing with their favourite characters, even if it impacts rarity,” says Fujita, “[so] we provide more opportunities for casual users to collect characters and enjoy the game.” The examples he gives of this are gifting players the choice of a rare character, as well as Kikoru/Kafka at launch, plus the free characters from the pre-registration campaign.
Coming back to Kafka, as you’d imagine he’s central to the game’s new story, and there’s a lot of it, with each mission bookended by cutscenes or dialogue sequences. If it feels to-the-point, that’s very much deliberate. “In the main Kaiju No. 8 story, the focus is heavily on maintaining narrative momentum,” explains Fujita, “and thus everyday life aspects are intentionally not depicted. To fill in those gaps, we created the character stories.” This is a separate mode with small stories based around the major characters. “We hope players will enjoy the casual conversations between characters and discover new parts of their personalities that aren’t seen in the main story.”
Even so, in keeping with the manga and anime, there are still some pretty goofy, playful sequences in the main story. “We’re trying to stay as true to the original work’s artistic direction as possible,” says Fujita, while also wanting to “show a ‘cooler side of Kafka’ in the game,” as compared with how he’s often portrayed in the anime.
“We’re trying to stay as true to the original work’s artistic direction as possible…” – Shinya Fujita
As for the enemies, this is where the game really takes off. “There will be 20-30 different genres [of kaiju],” says Art Director Yuya Kuroyabu. A few examples pulled from the series include Wyvern-type, Lizard-type and Ant-type, but we can’t wait to see what else the team comes up with. Kuroyabu mentioned that the team were inspired by kaiju movies, particularly the Tokusatsu genre, and utilised classic elements from those films such as low camera angles to emphasise size.
The kaiju designs also have to fit neatly into a fun gameplay framework. “Our core philosophy for this game is to prioritise clarity,” explains Producer Shinya Fujita, “so we’ve tried to give kaiju abilities that can be inferred from their appearance. For example, Fungal-Type kaiju might inflict status ailments like poison, while Spider-Types might use web attacks to reduce your speed.” These status effects may be easy enough to counter on their own, but when the game starts throwing multiple types at you simultaneously, it’s going to get a bit more complicated. You can read more about how the game plays in our hands-on impressions.
As for the kaiju design that Art Director Yuya Kuroyabu is most excited about, it comes down to how the team are helping to flesh out existing details in Matsumoto’s world. “The one I want to call out is Kaiju No. 1,” he says. “I forget which episode [it was in], but it did show up in the original manga and anime – but only from the bust up – so no one knew what the rest of it looked like… and now we’ve designed it, so you can find out in the game! We also used this kaiju as one of our key visuals as well. It’s a special one for me.”
3D Artist Kazushi Matsumoto shares a similar sentiment. “There are a lot of things that aren’t from the manga or anime that we’ve realised in the game,” he says, “so we’re looking forward to the players discovering them. Plus, we’ve prepared a lot of content for not only Kaiju No. 8 fans, but for Japanese anime lovers too.”
Now that Kaiju No. 8 The Game is out in the wild, there’s the question of what comes next. “We’re planning event stories that’ll let players get to know individual characters better,” says Fujita, “along with high-difficulty battle content for players seeking more challenging gameplay. And of course, we’re also planning story events featuring characters in special seasonal outfits.”
And presumably, in keeping with Matsumoto’s wishes, those outfits will not be overtly sexy. Regardless, “the most important thing” about running a live service game, says Fujita, “is to have love for the IP. Being a fan helps understand what other fans want.”
Cam Shea visited Akatsuki Games in Tokyo as a guest. He’s a former IGN staffer, now freelance writer and beer geek.
Back when Pokémon was taking off in the late ’90s, trainers around the globe were treated to the very first anime movie. It stars Ash, Pikachu and their friends, as well as a Pokémon battle “like never before” featuring Mew and Mewtwo.
If you’ve never got around to watching Pokémon: The First Movie, or just want to revisit it, the official Pokémon TV channel has now uploaded the entire film on YouTube. This will apparently be viewable for a “limited-time” and will be followed by Pokémon: The Movie 2000 and Pokémon 3: The Movie.
Happy Hollow Knight: Silksong launch day to all who celebrate! I’ve only played three hours so far and I’m already overwhelmed in the best possible way. It took no time at all for me to get completely lost in the world of this hotly anticipated sequel, one that shortens the intimidating lead-in area its predecessor had in order to more quickly give you branching paths to pick from and the tools to explore them more confidently. It’s too early to get a real sense of where things will go, how all the changes it makes to stuff like upgrades and abilities will play out, or how big this beautiful new land truly is, but my impression so far is that Silksong is already managing to meet the sky-high expectations that have been set for it.
One of the most immediate differences Hollow Knight fans will notice is that our new hero, Hornet, isn’t the silent type like her pint-sized companion from the original. She has personality and charm, chatting with the bugs you meet across the world of Pharloom. I was initially worried that this might change the quiet tone in an unappealing way, but Hornet is still a fairly stoic character overall – confident and cautiously friendly, happy to speak her mind when she feels she should, but still reclusive in a way that allows others to do most of the talking. So it’s a shift, especially when she explains something a little more directly than Hollow Knight’s vague dialogue ever would, but one I am enjoying for the moment.
It also helps that the writing is top notch once again. It’s often poetic and illusive in a way that never feels overly pompous, leaving plenty of room for serious characters and silly gags alike. An early favorite of mine is a pilgrim singing to a door in an attempt to open it, only for them to claim the credit when you find the lever that actually does so. All the attention to quality and detail that made Hollow Knight a true standout is still alive and well here, with areas I can’t wait to learn more about, characters I am excited to get to know, and stellar music I can already tell I am going to be listening to for a long time to come.
Another aspect I am excited to see evolve are the options for customization. Ability-granting charms are color-coded this time around, meaning you have to pick your priorities if certain items overlap – for example, a lot of the early options I’ve found go into the yellow slot, making me choose if I want enemies to drop more currency or if I want to have it automatically be picked up for me when they do. That choice extends into a secondary attack (the only one I’ve found so far is a quick throwing dagger), and even Crests that more drastically change your attack in a way that feels like you are swapping weapons.
Honestly, I just can’t wait to stop typing this so I can dive back in.
It seems like a huge amount of flexibility, and I’m excited to see if the options I will unlock let me truly start crafting coherent builds in the way I am hoping. This system runs the risk of offering a lot of false choices or leading you down certain paths that are just obviously better than others, but if Team Cherry has figured out the proper tuning, it could also open the door to supporting massively different playstyles based entirely on your own tastes.
I imagine we’ll need to take advantage of those options, too, because Silksong isn’t messing around. It’s not afraid to punish you, such as the way you drop all of a currency called Rosaries when you die and have to do a corpse run to the location you were killed to retrieve them, and enemies can be tough enough to force you to take that walk if you push the limits of your exploration too far. That said, Silksong has a lot of ways to mitigate that punishment, such as letting you pay to stash your extra Rosaries in the form of a consumable item, giving you an early option to lose less of them on death, and not tying every unlockable to that single resource in case the worst does occur. It’s still early, but I think this will result in less frustration overall relative to Hollow Knight.
Similarly, one of the most common reasons people would bounce off the original was the initially sparse map system – the early areas branch in a way that meant you could miss the map for a long while, and then you had to return to town to buy upgrades before it updated or even showed you on it. You still need those upgrades, but the place you get them is now located right on your path before things start to open up, and that happens much earlier, so that’s another rough edge smartly smoothed down. It’s still a dangerous thrill when you are exploring an uncharted area for the first time, trying to push your luck in search of that next resting spot, but that’s no longer a feeling you are forced into before you’ve even found your footing.
I could keep digging into more early observations, but honestly I just can’t wait to stop typing this so I can dive back in. I haven’t even wrapped my head around how big this thing is going to be – and if its achievement for speedrunning 100% completion is any indication it could be quite large, as you now have to do that in under 30 hours compared to Hollow Knight’s 20. But so far Silksong is exactly what I want from a sequel like this: it’s not completely reinventing the wheel or messing with all the things that made the first game so incredible, but it’s also not resting on its laurels. No part of it feels untouched, and as far as I can tell right now, it somehow feels even better for it.
The sequel to Team Cherry’s original bleak and beloved metroidvania game finally launched across PC and consoles earlier today, bringing an end to more than six painful years of anticipation. As what is sure to be millions of fans swarm to see if the wait was worth it, The Verge has pointed out that the Hollow Knight: Silksong credits tease a special cameo from one of the most notable indie developers of the last decade.
Those who navigate to the Hollow Knight sequel’s credits – which can be found in the “extras” option on the main menu – will notice that Barone is featured among the shortlist of names included under “Additional Character Voices.” It means that, if you know where to look, you’ll be able to hear the mastermind behind farming sim sensation Stardew Valley among those lending their voice talents to the land of Pharloom and all of its insect inhabitants.
Unfortunately, it’s a bit unclear how exactly Barone is featured in Hollow Knight: Silksong. ConcernedApe’s head of operations and business development, Cole Medeiros, confirmed with The Verge that, while the Stardew Valley creator does indeed play a role in the Hollow Knight follow-up, they aren’t ready to reveal who he plays. Medeiros added that Barone would “rather not say which character(s) so as not to spoil any surprises for anyone.”
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
