How Hollow Knight: Silksong Rose to Success Despite Mixed Reaction
Australian indie studio Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight action series garnered 25.8 million viewers across Huya, Douyu and Bilibili in September. This was mainly driven by its new title released on September 4, Hollow Knight: Silksong. The new unlicensed premium PC/console game was launched on Steam International with regional pricing at RMB 76 (USD $10.67), lower than the international price of USD $19.99.
The original Hollow Knight launched in 2017 and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. Building on this widely recognized IP, the long-awaited sequel Hollow Knight:Silksong ranked #1 on Steam’s China weekly best-selling games chart within its first week of launch.
While the game was well received for its gameplay innovations, over half of the reviews left by Chinese players at launch were negative. Players criticized the Simplified Chinese localization citing a writing style that blended awkward classical phrasing with obscure modern expressions, described by some players as “worse than AI translation.”
In response, Team Cherry has publicly committed to revising the localization and recommended that players use a fan made mod translation in the meantime. 63% of the Simplified Chinese reviews are now positive, but this trails the over 95% positive rate for the original Hollow Knight.
The backlash reflects rising expectations among Chinese gamers for high-quality
localizations, particularly for narrative-heavy indie titles, and reinforces the growing importance of Chinese-language PC gamers.
The above is an extract from our China Games & Livestreaming Tracker September 2025 summary. See the free sample here.
Niko Partners’ China Games & Livestreaming Tracker views all current and historical data in our dashboard, updated every 24 hours. Niko’s analysts write and post monthly analysis of key trends and data observed in the Tracker to help our clients with important insights. Learn more about the platform here. Book your free demo!