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Silksong Reviews Tank Following Massive Release, Developer Responds

Hollow Knight: Silksong is currently enjoying a wide wave of enthusiasm and praise after the long-awaited indie sequel was finally released yesterday. Silksong‘s player count is already through the roof and it’s being lauded for its tight mechanics and accessible low price. However, despite this overwhelming success, there is a contingent of fans who are not happy with the game.
On Steam, Silksong is currently suffering from a deluge of negative reviews over the state of its Chinese translation, which disgruntled fans feel is worse than the original Hollow Knight and leans too heavily into archaic speech and pretentious prose. While the game currently has a “Very Positive” rating from reviews in all languages, Hollow Knight: Silksong only has a 51% “Mixed” rating in Simplified Chinese language reviews. This brings the game’s entire average down compared to review languages like English, where it has reached “Overwhelmingly Positive.”
Team Cherry Responds to the Translation Backlash
Wanting to address this situation quickly and succinctly, a representative for Team Cherry issued an apology over the translation issues with the game and promised to address it in the near future. “To our Chinese speaking fans: We appreciate you letting us know about quality issues with the current Simplified Chinese translation of Hollow Knight: Silksong,” wrote Team Cherry marketing & publishing representative Matthew Griffin wrote on X. “We’ll be working to improve the translation over the coming weeks. Thanks for your feedback and support.”
According to complaints, the equivalent of this unpopular translation in English would be like if they suddenly switched the dialogue to Old English and completely changed the tone from the previous game. The prose was compared to a “wuxia novel written by a teenager” by one user on X.
Chinese translations have been notoriously tricky to get right, especially in the Western indie space. Stardew Valley encountered trouble last year when it attempted to fix translation issues through an update patch, which sparked controversy and led to an eventual rollback. Chinese language characters rely on precise linework to be read correctly, and specific fonts can present issues for readers since characters can look similar and might have overlapping meanings depending on the context.
Those who play Western games in Chinese often complain about the quality of translations that haven’t improved much over the years, despite Chinese language customers making up a larger part of a game’s potential audience than ever before. Earlier this year, GameDiscover reported that Chinese slightly surpassed English as the primary language for Steam users for the first time in 2024, underscoring the need for better Simplified Chinese translations.
I think that, as the release of a massive game like Silksong has shown, translation issues will start having more outsized effects on user and review scores, forcing developers to put more effort into outputting better games in the future. No longer is having a bad translation a niche issue, since the majority of users on a platform like Steam, according to the data, have their primary language set to one other than English. This issue seems to be on the platform’s mind, as recently, Steam changed the way review scores are displayed to reflect the “vastly different experiences” that users were having in different languages for the same game.
What are your thoughts on the reviews of Silksong over the unpopular Simplified Chinese translation? Is the reaction justified, and does Silksong deserve a lower overall review score because of this misstep?
Editor’s note: The title of the article was updated as “review bombed” was not appropriately accurate.
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Prince Harry makes surprise visit to Ukraine

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Prince Harry has arrived in Ukraine for a surprise visit in support of wounded service members.
Harry’s representatives confirmed they were in the capital, Kyiv, on Friday, though they declined to discuss the prince’s schedule for security reasons.
This is the second time Harry has visited Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full scale invasion in 2022. He made a trip to the western city of Lviv in April.
“We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process,” Harry told the Guardian newspaper while on an overnight train to Kyiv.
Harry, a British Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, is the founder of the Invictus Games, a Paralympic-style event designed to inspire military veterans around the world as they work to overcome battlefield injuries. Ukraine is bidding to host the games in 2029.
The Archewell foundation set up by Harry and his wife Meghan announced this week that it had donated $500,000 to projects supporting injured children from Gaza and Ukraine. The money will be used to help the World Health Organization with medical evacuations and to fund work developing prosthetics for seriously injured young people.
The Guardian said that Harry will visit the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, spend time with 200 veterans and meet Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko.
His visit coincided with a trip to Ukraine by British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, who announced a new set of U.K. sanctions targeting Russia’s oil revenues and military supplies.
Cooper said the visit is a show of solidarity with Ukrainians facing intensified assault from Russia – including 6,500 drones and missiles in July, 10 times the level of a year ago.
Harry’s appearance in Ukraine follows a four-day trip to the U.K., where he met his father, King Charles III, for the first time in 19 months. The meeting was seen as a first step in repairing frigid relations between Harry and other members of the royal family, which deteriorated after he and his wife, the former Meghan Markle, gave up royal duties and moved to California in 2020.
Harry and his father last met in February 2024, when the prince flew to London after receiving news that Charles had been diagnosed with cancer. Harry spent about 45 minutes with Charles before the king flew to his Sandringham country estate to recuperate from his treatment.
Prince Harry’s last trip to Ukraine included a visit to the Superhumans Center, an orthopedic clinic in Lviv that treats wounded military personnel and civilians. The center provides prosthetic limbs, reconstructive surgery and psychological help free of charge.
Harry’s visit Friday come as Russia escalates its war against Ukraine.
It is less than a week after Russia’s largest aerial attack on Ukraine since its all-out invasion began more than three years ago — an attack in which the main Ukrainian government building was hit. It also comes just days after numerous Russian drones entered the airspace of NATO member Poland — the country Harry traveled through to reach Ukraine.
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Canelo vs Crawford: UFC chief Dana White clashes with reporter at news conference

Crawford, with 41 wins and 31 knockouts, won his first world title in 2014 at lightweight against Scotsman Ricky Burns. He went on to unify the light-welterweight and welterweight divisions before moving up again.
Saturday’s bout will be broadcast globally on Netflix, reaching a potential audience of more than 300 million subscribers.
It is the first major boxing event promoted by White alongside Saudi’s Turki Alalshikh, signalling a new, if uncertain, era for the sport.
As organisers hyped up the new partnership as the saviour of the sport and suggested boxing has been suffering for years, one of its biggest stars – and highest earners with a reported $150m purse to collect on Saturday – Alvarez, chimed in.
“Hey, boxing was always bigger, bigger and big. Don’t say boxing is not big enough. You know how big is boxing,” he said.
Alvarez pushed Crawford as tempers flared at in New York in June, but the two shared a nod and handshake to end on a respectful note.
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