Prompting floods of fans to complain about the outage, Hollow Knight: Silksong caused chaos online as the release of one of the year’s most anticipated video games brought down major digital stores worldwide.
Hollow Knight: Silksong has caused chaos online as the release of one of the year’s most anticipated video games brought down major digital stores worldwide.
When the sequel to the hit indie title went live late last week, thousands of players reported being unable to buy it on Steam, the world’s largest PC game store.
Errors persisted for hours into the release time, while fans also experienced problems on Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
Christopher Larkin, who composed the soundtrack for both Hollow Knight titles, joked on X the launch may have “crashed the Internet”.
Reports on outage-tracking service Downdetector peaked at 3,750 as frustrated fans struggled to access the game.
Social media users posted screenshots of error codes across multiple platforms, while others criticised the lack of a pre-order option, which they said might have prevented the disruption.
One gamer wrote the outage was “ridiculous”, while another described it as “stupid”.
The demand was so intense a message was briefly displayed saying Silksong was “no longer available” before restoring sales.
Despite the problems, Steam reported more than 100,000 people were already playing the game within half an hour of launch, suggesting many players had secured their copies through other stores.
Some fans responded with humour, with one X user saying they had “beat the hardest boss” – posting a screenshot showing their successful purchase of Silksong.
Another asked on a discussion board: “How you guys play (when) I can’t even buy?”
The Hollow Knight series was created by Team Cherry, a three-person studio based in Adelaide, Australia.
Released in 2017, the first game in the franchise has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, according to the developer.
It was praised for its distinctive art style and complex side-scrolling adventure gameplay, which follows insect-like characters in a dark fantasy world.
The sequel centres on Hornet, a sword-wielding princess who originally appeared as a supporting character.
William Pellen, one of Team Cherry’s developers, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “The fact that people keep discovering Hollow Knight, the original, and this was our hope with it, suggests that it hasn’t fallen out of date.
“The satisfying thing with Hollow Knight was that we were making something that was to our tastes, and that meant that we were making things that were slightly different.
“It was inspired by older games, so its qualities were slightly different from the more modern games of the time.
“In a way that it’s sort of outside of time, hopefully Silksong can achieve that too.”
Hollow Knight: Silksong release brought down major digital stores worldwide
