The long-awaited release of Hollow Knight: Silksong on Thursday sent shockwaves through the gaming world and brought several of its biggest digital storefronts crashing down.
Steam, the PC giant, buckled under the surge of demand shortly after the game went live at 19:00 PKT, leaving thousands of players unable to purchase copies for more than two hours. Similar reports of errors flooded in from Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox stores, with frustrated fans sharing screenshots of error codes across social media.
Down detector, which tracks online outages, registered a sharp spike in complaints that peaked at 3,750 before gradually easing.
The chaos sparked anger from gamers who had been waiting seven years for Team Cherry’s sequel to 2017’s indie hit Hollow Knight. Many complained the issues could have been avoided if pre-orders had been allowed. “Ridiculous,” one fan wrote, while another said they had to “defeat the hardest boss” just to complete their purchase.
Even Humble Bundle temporarily listed the game as “no longer available” before restoring access, prompting some to joke on X that Silksong may have “crashed the internet.”
Yet demand was so fierce that within 30 minutes of launch, Steam still recorded more than 100,000 players in-game, suggesting many bought through alternate platforms.
The frenzy underscores the extraordinary anticipation for Silksong. Developed by Team Cherry, a three-person studio in Adelaide, Like its predecessor, Silksong is a hand-drawn, side-scrolling “Metroidvania” adventure set in a mysterious underground kingdom populated by insect warriors. This time, players control Hornet – a swift, sword-wielding princess. And a fan-favorite from the first installment where she was a former supporting character – on a journey through vast interconnected landscapes filled with challenging enemies, platforming, and atmospheric storytelling.
“The fact that people keep discovering Hollow Knight years later suggests that it hasn’t fallen out of date,” said Team Cherry co-creator William Pellen in an interview with ABC Australia. “Hopefully Silksong can achieve that too.”
For many players, though, the opening hours of Silksong were defined less by exploration than by error messages — a frustrating reminder of how digital distribution can still stumble under the weight of overwhelming demand.
