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.

Look to the skies on Sept. 7-8 to witness Earth’s shadow roll over the lunar disk, giving rise to a deep red “blood moon.” Here’s what to expect during each phase of this week’s total lunar eclipse.

A total lunar eclipse occurs when Earth passes between the moon and sun, temporarily bathing the entire lunar disk in its shadow. This in turn causes our natural satellite to glow a deep red, as the scattered light from every sunrise and sunset on Earth is bent onto the lunar disk.

A surfer at a popular Sydney beach was mauled to death by a suspected “large shark” on Saturday, Australian police said, in a rare fatal attack.

The 57-year-old man was surfing with friends in the Pacific waters off northern Sydney’s adjoining Long Reef and Dee Why beaches when the attack happened, authorities said.

The man – an experienced surfer with a wife and a young daughter – lost “a number of limbs”, New South Wales police superintendent John Ducan told reporters.

“I do understand that both him and his board disappeared underwater,” he said. “The body was found floating in the surf.”

A couple of surfers saw him in the water and got him to shore, Duncan said.

“Unfortunately, by that time, we understand he lost probably a lot of blood and attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful,” he said.

People nearby saw the ocean predator, according to police, who earlier said they believed a “large shark” attacked the man.

Government experts will examine the remains of the surfboard and the man’s body to help them determine the species of shark involved, police said.

There are about 100 shark species in Western Australia, according to SharkSmart, a website run by Australian officials that warns about shark activity and gives tips on how to stay safe. Most of the species are capable of injuring humans, but an “overwhelming majority of them are not aggressive under most circumstances.” Most serious shark bites in ocean-loving Australia are from great whites, bull sharks, and tiger sharks.

After the incident, nearby beaches were closed for at least 24 hours. Drones and surf lifesavers on water skis were patrolling the beaches for shark activity.

Fatal shark attacks are rare. In 2024, there were only seven fatal attacks, including four unprovoked attacks, around the world, according to research by the International Shark Attack File, a database run by the Florida Museum of Natural History and the University of Florida.

Overall, shark attacks decreased dramatically in 2024 and were far below the annual average. 

This was the first fatal shark attack in Sydney since 2022, when a 35-year-old British diving instructor was killed off Little Bay. The previous fatal attack in the city was in 1963. Australia’s last deadly shark attack was in March, when a surfer was taken off the remote Wharton Beach of Western Australia.

Another surfer was presumed dead after a shark attack in South Australia in early January. A witness who saw the attack rode into the sea and retrieved the man’s surfboard, but officials said there was “no sign” of the surfer afterwards.

There have been more than 1,280 shark incidents around Australia since 1791, of which over 250 resulted in death, according to a database of the predators’ encounters with humans.

Kerry Breen

contributed to this report.