Hollow Knight Silksong’s Gamescom demo blew people away – and it’s reportedly 6 years old

According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, the first look at Silksong that many people got at Gamescom is the exact same demo he played all the way back in 2019. The slice of the game that’s wow-ed everyone on the event floor is what the game looked like 6 years ago.

It’s no secret that Silksong has been in development for a long time. It’s had a bizarre transition from Hollow Knight DLC into a full game, with the developers taking their time and having fun making the game they wanted to.

Considering the original Hollow Knight has sold over 15 million copies, they have the luxury of time. The devs probably could have never released a game again and been set for life, but, according to an interview with Jason Schreier, they do this because they love it.

He was speaking about his interview with the devs on stream with Atrioc when he casually dropped a very important big of lore: the Silksong demo that people were lining up for hours to play is the exact same as a build of the game he played in 2019.

Silksong’s Gamescom demo is a 2019 build

Some games are truly ageless and stand the test of time. However, people getting hyped by a build of a game that’s 6 years old is pretty much unheard of.

However, according to Jason Schreier, that’s exactly what people were lining up for at Gamescom 2025. The wait was literal hours, with a line snaking all the way through the show floor, with people wanting to play a version of the game they didn’t even know was 6 years old.

“At E3 2019, I played it, it was really cool. Hilariously, that demo is the same exact demo they brought to Gamescom this week, so all these people who were waiting in line 3 hours to play this demo, I played it six years ago,” he claimed.

As a result, there’s a good chance we haven’t seen a fraction of what Team Cherry has been cooking all this time. If they’re able to satisfy fans with a demo that’s years old at this point, how old is what we’ve seen in the trailers so far? What have they really been working on all this time?