Hollow Knight: Silksong – Launch Hype Causes Crashes and Chaos

Storefronts Come Crashing Down

As fans headed to their favorite online storefronts to buy a copy of Silksong – it quickly became obvious that something was wrong. All the more popular storefronts seemed to crash at the same time:

• Steam started to display a “Something Went Wrong” message within 30 seconds of the release. For many the Steam store became completely inaccessible, while others reported being unable to access the game page, add it to their cart, or complete the purchase.
• Nintendo eShop showed several error codes along with a lagging user interface, slow loading speeds, and sometimes even hung pages.
• The Playstation Store faced delays, and the Silksong listing disappeared from regional stores or became unavailable. Some users found themselves stuck on the ‘Wishlisted’ page for a prolonged period of time.
• Xbox Store and Game Pass users arguably had the fewest issues, though some reported extremely slow download speeds and blank screens.

Essentially, for about 30 minutes after Silksong’s launch everything ground to a halt. Fans tried many workarounds to get past the error screens and delays, but nothing seemed to make a difference although some did have limited success using VPN providers to connect to servers in different regions.

Predictably, social media exploded in a firestorm as frustrated users began to flood it with complaints about the issues they were facing. Fortunately, after about half an hour, the storefronts started to come back up – though some people continued to experience issues for several more hours.

What Went Wrong

If you’re one of the many people wondering how this could happen in today’s day and age, the short answer is simple: Too many people trying to buy and download the game simultaneously led to a flood of traffic beyond what storefronts could cope with.

The reason why this deluge took place is primarily due to the high demand for Silksong. Its predecessor sold over 15 million copies, and the anticipation for Silksong’s release has been steadily building into a fever pitch over the last six years. Add to that its relatively low price tag of $19.99 and it was viewed as a ‘must buy’ for many gamers.

Another factor worth noting is the lack of preorders or preloading. Many modern games allow users to preorder games in advance, and pay as well as download them before the official release date – which can stagger the server load. Silksong opted not to do this, meaning that everyone, everywhere, was trying to purchase and download it at the same time.

So what went wrong? Basically Silksong was just too popular for storefronts to handle the demand of a simultaneous worldwide release – causing their servers to overload and crash.

Crashes Didn’t Get In the Way of Players

Despite the crashes, Silksong has charted record-breaking numbers since its release. Within 30 minutes of launch it had surpassed 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, and went on to peak at 535,213 in the first 24 hours according to SteamDB. It also earned an ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ rating with over 10,000 reviews within the first 12 hours.

Things were just as impressive over on Twitch where a peak of 357,462 concurrent viewers tuned in to watch streamers who managed to get their hands on the game despite the crashes. Evidently, viewers figured it was their best bet to check out the game while waiting for storefronts to recover.

If anything, the crashes and chaos of launch day may even have inadvertently drawn even more attention to Hollow Knight: Silksong and acted as a testament to just how popular it is. While no official sales numbers have been announced, it looks to be on track to beat its predecessor if things continue apace.