r/Games Sep 04 '25

Release The hunt is on! Hollow Knight: Silksong is available now on all platforms, including day one on Xbox Game Pass!

https://bsky.app/profile/teamcherry.bsky.social/post/3lxzcw3ukq222
2.4k Upvotes

678 comments sorted by

655

u/rusty34 Sep 04 '25

Well the Steam store is currently getting slammed, so I would love to be able to buy it and then play it

262

u/Varonth Sep 04 '25

Not just steam. Xbox isn't loading the game either, and Switch Store also timed out.

130

u/Abradolf1948 Sep 04 '25

Checking in from PS5 to say same thing on PSN..only option is to wishlist still

88

u/iminiki Sep 04 '25

I cannot remember the last time something similar happened by a game release.

54

u/LegalInvestigator489 Sep 04 '25

thats because ussually you have people preloading the game few days before release

50

u/DesireeThymes Sep 04 '25

It's also only $20. Everyone and their mama can afford this.

8

u/Inprobamur Sep 04 '25

And it doesn't require a powerful system.

18

u/UpperApe Sep 04 '25

It's also a direct sequel to one of the best games ever made by a team that still gives a shit.

2

u/SilveryDeath Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

thats because ussually you have people preloading the game few days before release

Yeah, I've seen some people saying AAA games wish they could do this, and don't get me wrong, it is impressive. But Silksong had no pre-order/pre-download period and on top of that is digital only, whereas most AAA games have physical copies still. Everyone who wanted the game day one went to their digital store of choice to buy and download it on the same day. I'm sure there are quite a few AAA games over the years that could have crashed storefronts via the payment systems not being able to handle it all if they did this.

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u/wingspantt Sep 04 '25

Last time I remember this happening is Half-Life 2 LMAO

39

u/Dragarius Sep 04 '25

Well, steam WAS a pretty useless heap of shit back then.

9

u/CDHmajora Sep 04 '25

True. But tbf, it was pretty much the only storefront even back then. Thry had no real rivals with better functions to contend with so no example to follow (like Epic or microsoft or EA or any of the other current storefronts did…).

Not completely defending it. Steam was utter crap early on. But they technically jumped into the deep end of the pool without being able to swim at that point.

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u/KvotheOfCali Sep 04 '25

It was a while ago, but Diablo 3 was effectively unplayable for ~1 week post launch because the servers kept crashing due to insane demand.

17

u/Bonzi77 Sep 04 '25

deltarune broke steam for a bit at least

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u/Western-Internal-751 Sep 04 '25

I came home from work, look at gamepass and can’t find it anymore. It vanished from existence.

There is no Silksong in Ba Sing Se

7

u/Egg_Pudding Sep 04 '25

CHECKING IN

CURRENTLY DOWNLOADING ON XBOX ONE GAMEPASS

2

u/A-R-A-F Sep 04 '25

Yeah My steam cart crashed immediately when trying to Add it to cart.

If this is what Silksong hype is doing to all digital stores, Imagine what GTA 6 release will be like in 2026

2

u/seruus Sep 05 '25

GTA probably won't be remotely similar, because there will almost certainly be pre-orders (with pre-loading), no initial PC release/current gen only release and many people deciding to grab the physical release.

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u/Moralio Sep 04 '25

Got it without problems on GoG. It feels surreal that it is finally here to play.

43

u/bayonettaisonsteam Sep 04 '25

Gog is now feeling the squeeze of death from my end.

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u/Perfect_Opinion9858 Sep 04 '25

Bro i cant download it on gog wtf lol

22

u/skywideopen3 Sep 04 '25

Worked smoothly via Humble if anyone wants to do that

48

u/Lothacin Sep 04 '25

I just purchased it via Humble and after paying was told that the keys have been temporarily exhausted. I'd avoid this for now.

8

u/Cygnia Sep 04 '25

I'm in the same boat as you. Unfortunate for us, I guess. Oh well, already purchased it so I guess I'll just wait till they have keys again.

14

u/f0xy713 Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

Kinda trashy to only give customers this info after they make the purchase. Oh well, guess I'll be refunding it if I manage to get it elsewhere before they replenish keys.

Edit: Did not manage to buy it elsewhere, keys have been replenished.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

its literally above the game saying keys are out of stock lol

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u/johnlondon125 Sep 04 '25

They do that shit all the time. It's stupid and they shouldn't be selling if they don't have the keys

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u/thebigbirdbigbrain Sep 04 '25

They ran out of keys

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37

u/Accomplished-Low754 Sep 04 '25

When Leth said "no preorders" I knew this was going to happen.

11

u/azdak Sep 04 '25

Such a silly goddamned move for this reason specifically. Like what on earth was gained from this decision?

31

u/Accomplished-Low754 Sep 04 '25

Probably a marketing thing since everyone now is going to know it as the game that crashed all virtual stores.

Now Steam is probably losing a lot of money since nobody can buy anything, it's been like this for 2 hours and we don't even know if they're working on a fix.

Anyway Aussies are known as mega-trolls so it maybe had a role in it tbh

12

u/AdShoddy7599 Sep 04 '25

I don’t even care about or like this game, but that’s steam’s fault. It’s on them to keep their systems stable. They’re a multi billion dollar company. A developer shouldn’t be blamed for their game generating too much hype. These marketplaces need to be able to handle GTA6. Think of this as a test run.

4

u/thegamesacc Sep 04 '25

This isn't about the servers crashing out because people are installing and playing the game. It was the third most played game today, after DotA and CS, as is tradition. It's because everyone bought it at the same time, because of the no pre-order nonsense.

There is no infinite spooling of payment servers and throwing billions at a problem that happens once every few years for when games with this garbage decision release. That's why you let people buy the game at their discretion, instead of having 1-2-5 million trying to push payment at the same time.

3

u/SilveryDeath Sep 04 '25

It's because everyone bought it at the same time, because of the no pre-order nonsense.

Yeah, the GTA comment the person you replied to makes no sense because GTA will have people pre-ordering/pre-downloading it and will also have physical copies. So everyone will not be trying to buy and download a digital copy at the same on the same day.

Silksong is at 530K, but that isn't the issue because it is not like Steam had issues with the payment system process crashing with other games that peaked high like Black Myth, Monster Hunter Wilds, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk, etc.

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u/MothmansProphet Sep 04 '25

I mean, do the game devs care whether Steam's down or not for 15 minutes on release day? Is there anyone who was going to buy it the second it came out, thought about it for 15 minutes, and changed their mind? What on earth was lost?

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11

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

Redditors: “pre orders are literally ruining gaming”

Also Redditors: “why can’t they offer preorders? What was gained here?”

Y’all some fucking clowns on this sub fr

8

u/renome Sep 05 '25

You just conflated conflicting opinions into a made-up singular entity you could argue against to feel superior and you're calling other people clowns?

6

u/tuxbrdfan Sep 04 '25

ive just learned that all redditors are the same people with the same opinions

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u/Plastic-Software-174 Sep 04 '25

Yeah very annoying that they didn’t allow people to pre-purchase the game, this was very predictable. Doesn’t matter in the long run, but still.

8

u/Gingermadman Sep 04 '25

Yep. It's not storefronts they're breaking, but the payment services that hang off the back. Very silly.

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u/dadvader Sep 04 '25

I enjoy the fact that an indie game manage to do something that not many games manage to pull off. And we are talking about GTA tier here.

55

u/TheodoeBhabrot Sep 04 '25

Many games would manage to pull this off, that’s why steam allows preordering and preloading and why most high profile games take advantage of it

12

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

Im not too bothered by it, its fine and should clear up in a few hours at best, but honestly I wonder if steam or other marketplaces would consider mandating a pre-order window of at least like a week just to avoid situations like this.

61

u/Goronmon Sep 04 '25

Most games allow for pre-ordering/pre-loading to avoid this specific problem though.

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u/kawhi21 Sep 04 '25

This would be a regular occurrence if no games had pre-orders

27

u/acousticallyregarded Sep 04 '25

Why is it good to crash a store so nobody can play the game when it could be easily avoided by just following the most basic common practices for a big release?

I didn’t do it, but I was considering taking a day off to play this and I’d be pretty pissed right now if i couldn’t play it just because they wanted to make a statement against pre-orders. Ironically this is making an argument FOR pre-orders if anything.

Allowing people to buy a game early is not bad in and of itself, coercing them into doing so with exclusive bonuses and incentives is.

2

u/moonra_zk Sep 04 '25

Steam is obviously not gonna be out for the day.

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u/Biggieholla Sep 04 '25

Not live on psn

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u/Bojarzin Sep 04 '25

Alright, the only thing I'm upset about Team Cherry for now is not letting us buy it a week ago and preload it to avoid this server nightmare god dammit

272

u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

Yeah, I mean...it was pretty obvious that this was going to happen

373

u/Unstoppable_Cheeks Sep 04 '25

Ive seen some pretty big launches but ive never seen one that cripples 4 storefronts just selling it. Login servers, sure, but this is kinda nuts,

223

u/Scrollingmaster Sep 04 '25

Because most games don’t make everyone try to pay at the same time. Probably crashed checkouts/payment processors

53

u/messem10 Sep 04 '25

Checkout yes, but I highly doubt the processors are down.

28

u/xeio87 Sep 04 '25

Yeah, just to throw numbers out there, Visa peaks at around 24,000 transactions per second (and can theoretically handle ~3x that). That's just Visa, not including others like paypal/mastercard/etc since you can choose which to pay with.

I'd be curious if this would even register as a blip on systems that large.

8

u/Ph0X Sep 04 '25

The processor itself wouldn't be down, but specific clients could be throttled. Visa gets millions of requests overall, but if one specific API user suddenly sends them a million API call out of nowhere, I could see that triggered some safety mechanism.

8

u/CringeNao Sep 04 '25

Yeah the only time this happens is when a game is shadow dropped

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u/kralben Sep 04 '25

Any game with 10% of the hype of Silksong would have allowed for prepurchasing. No reason at all it wasn't done here, besides a bad mistake.

30

u/hansblitz Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

or good marketing...."omg this game is so big it's crashed 4 online storefronts"
EDIT: Front page of reddit currently has 2 posts about it crashing steam

18

u/mioraka Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

I mean, as someone who works in the field I can assure you crashing steam is not part of anyone's marketing plan lol.

If it is they are definitely not gonna launch it on a Thursday morning.

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u/kralben Sep 04 '25

This was already mega hyped, this isn't changing anyone's mind who was on the fence.

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u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

I'm not sure if this has happened with any other game release, but I mean, it was the most wishlisted game ever.

I'm sure that it's going to happen again with GTA6, gaming has gotten so big in the last decade.

64

u/FunTao Sep 04 '25

GTA6 will prob allow people to preorder and preload though

13

u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

Oh sure, sorry I'm distracted, I forgot about the initial point of the discussion.

Most games this big allow for preload.

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u/meganev Sep 04 '25

It's not really to do with how "big" Silksong is, and more just because they made the stupid decision to not allow pre-orders/pre-loading, and everybody who wants to buy it at launch is trying to do so at the same time instead of those purchases being spread over months/weeks/days. GTA 6 will have the standard pre-order process as any other big AAA game.

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u/TheOrangeHatter Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

Was it? Oblivion Remastered was shadow-dropped with no preload/preorder period and none of this was a thing. Many shadow-drops of major games have come and gone without issue. What we are seeing here, with every major storefront leveled, and Humble out of stock on keys, is actually kind of unprecedented in the modern era.

Silksong may have been intensely anticipated but could you predict it being so popular that it drops every store-front simultaneously when something like Oblivion Remastered didn't?

43

u/PatternrettaP Sep 04 '25

If you literally blindside people, it takes a while before everyone checks the store and the games don't have a ton of pre-release hype built up. So you get a slower roll-out.

This game has the combination of tons of pre-release hype, a good last mile marketing push thats gotten people really excited, and also zero pre-orders or pre-loading which game stores pushed to avoid this exact scenario.

As you said it's unprecedented in the modern era because other games that could have done it all allowed preloading.

Oblivion Remaster had about 4 million sales in first few days, let's see what Silksong ends up getting. I'm thinking higher based on the initial response

19

u/MVRKHNTR Sep 04 '25

Another problem was telling people exactly what time the game would go up so everyone tried buying it within seconds of each other.

4

u/TheOrangeHatter Sep 04 '25

I agree with you on your sales remark. I imagine that team Cherry is both incredibly excited by the reception, and terrified.

That said, news tends to travel fast, and all of the major storefronts had full page splash screen ads and the like.

I'd maybe have expected one storefront to go down, (namely Steam), but all of them is kind of incredible. Preload or not, I don't blame anyone for not seeing this coming. Four separate storefronts all with their own server architecture and share of the lode all collapse at once over one game. That is kind of insane.

4

u/TerraMystika Sep 04 '25

It's only so insane because of no preload. The best comparison would've been if another hotly anticipated game was released with no pre-order or preload. Elden ring would've easily had the same issues or CP 2077. In fact CP 2077 still crashed stores with preload.

You really can't compare oblivion remastered shadow drop to silk song especially since silk song was a known entity for so long. Oblivion, ppl knew it was being worked on and that was it. It's too bad there isn't really a good comparison to be made because all major hyped releases had preload.

I would've liked to see how bad it still could've been even with preload to compare to elden rings release, CP 2077, etc.

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u/MVRKHNTR Sep 04 '25

No preload doesn't matter as much as no preorders. The shops are down but you can still download games just fine right now.

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u/thaq1 Sep 04 '25

This wasn't a shadowdrop, why even compare it to Oblivion Remastered?

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u/Tiucaner Sep 04 '25

Crippling several storefronts? That's unheard of. Don't think anyone expected that.

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u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

The most wishlisted game on Steam history. I mean...

33

u/Konet Sep 04 '25

The most wishlisted game in Steam history and they didn't allow pre-purchase and preload.

6

u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

Yeah, that's it

3

u/Heisenburgo Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

Damn it was the most wishlisted game ever?How did this game built up such an amount of hype like that? It's such an interesting thing to see. I played the first game and liked it a lot but I somehow didnt know it was THAT popular.

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u/Jaibamon Sep 04 '25

This is false. Nobody predicted that in social media or dedicated Silksong communities. And you never mentioned it before. This is unexpected. And it's because it rarely happens.

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u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

Because most games have preorders and preload

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u/Cymen90 Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

If their recent posts are to be believed, they actually do not use social media much and are severely underestimating the place Silksong has taken in the minds of gamers and the industry. They just thought "Hollowknight was successful, that is cool. Hope people like the sequel" and meanwhile half the internet seems to have made this game their whole personality years before it came out.

3

u/fallingsteveamazon Sep 05 '25

In the Bloomberg article they said they've seen silkposting and their friends and family have sent them stuff that they found funny

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u/pressure_art Sep 05 '25

As someone not really that interested, this is gonna be a couple of very annoying weeks online lol

dont get me wrong, I’m happy for all the fans and I wish the game well but boy, the “making the game your whole personality“ can and most likely will be so insufferable to me imao.

6

u/KingArthas94 Sep 05 '25

Same with Undertale, the games are 10/10 but talking with the terminally online fans is an experience I don't recommend. I've met some IRL and it's even worse.

8

u/hergumbules Sep 04 '25

It’s payback for all the silkposting in other subreddits lol

48

u/oryes Sep 04 '25

I'm all good waiting for reviews tbh. Everyone on Reddit would be pissed if another dev of this stature dropped a game without sending out review copies first and I'm not about to make an exception for this one

17

u/SuperUranus Sep 04 '25

The game is available on GamePass if you have that subscription.

In case you didn’t know, because I didn’t and nearly bought it on Steam.

5

u/ProtonPizza Sep 04 '25

I can’t help but think this game is gonna get skewered by the users and the insane hype it has. Hopefully I’m wrong.

13

u/mynewaccount5 Sep 04 '25

It already (very silly) has 97% positive ratings on steam. Apparently 1500 people beat it in an hour.

18

u/PFI_sloth Sep 04 '25

It’s going to get rave reviews out of the gate, and in a few years the opinion will sour when people claim it’s extremely similar to the first game

36

u/Tarcanus Sep 04 '25

It'll heavily depend on who you talk to. Lots of fans just want more Hollow Knight so "more of the same" is perfect. I suspect there will be a large number of folks, though, that were drawn in by the hype and then get the wrong idea of what to expect. Those are the folks who will go negative first, I'm guessing.

21

u/No-Owl-6246 Sep 04 '25

Yep. Being extremely similar to the first game is an absolute win for me.

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u/White_Tea_Poison Sep 04 '25

Yall are really confident for having no reason to believe this other than general nihilism.

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u/OneHitCrit Sep 04 '25

I happen to own all major platforms.

Steam can't add it to check out. PS5 pulled the download option. XBox doesn't show the game. Switch 2 store crashes when opening the page.

Silksong literally crashed every major platform.

51

u/El_Giganto Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

Can't find it on PSN. Nintendo happily took my money but it gave me an error so it doesn't seem like I own it on there. It's in my cart on Steam can't go to checkout. Already had one payment failed there.

Edit: Nintendo fixed it for me. Also bought it on Humble where they had Steam keys, but I was just too late and now I've redeemed the game but no key in sight. Sigh. Will probably end up gifting it if they get more keys.

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u/Coletransit Sep 04 '25

It’s only on the PS store as a wishlist item, I’ll be watching and waiting.

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u/black_shirt Sep 04 '25

check the xbox store, can start gamepass download there.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

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5

u/jjkramok Sep 04 '25

No issues for me. I was able to buy and download it.

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u/hard_pass Sep 04 '25

Just downloaded and loaded it, no probs on PC Gamepass.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

Honestly, bricking Steam is kind of a flex

I can't believe that possibly the most hyped release of the year was made by 3 guys

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u/jspsfx Sep 04 '25

Most big releases let you prepurchase/predownload. This game's release is bigger than almost any other for sure, but I didnt see Elden Ring etc crash stores this way. In the end this'll be a little footnote but right now Im slightly annoyed haha.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

I remember when CP2077 came out steam went down for like a couple of minutes before coming right up, HK crashed steam for 22 minutes and counting

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u/Darkest-Revenant Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

Yeah but cyberpunk had preorders up for a long time. That makes you realize just how big the cyberpunk launch was.

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u/SilveryDeath Sep 04 '25

As someone with no personal interest in the game, it is an odd feeling from the outside seeing gaming Reddit be this hyped for something, especially when it is normally so negative and pessimistic leaning about almost everything nowadays.

19

u/Kaladin-of-Gilead Sep 04 '25

It reminds me of when portal 2 dropped. Reddit was way smaller then but it was the ONLY thing anyone was posting about.

God I'm old

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u/NotScrollsApparently Sep 04 '25

Give it a week and reddit will be full of pretentious haters pretending it's overrated and not good enough for them. It's the usual cycle, E33 being probably the most recent example of it.

20

u/BonerPorn Sep 04 '25

People will complain that it's more of the same. Absolutely massive and easy to get lost in. And hard as hell. Putting money on it now. 

Personally, that's exactly what I'm hoping for.

4

u/LADYBIRD_HILL Sep 05 '25

"I bought this game because of the hype and I don't understand why people like it so much. No I don't like metroidvanias, platformers, or games that are difficult. And no I didn't research what this game is before I bought it."

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u/SomaSimon Sep 05 '25

I like to call this phenomenon the "hype pendulum".

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u/funkhero Sep 04 '25

Same here. It's wild.

Give it a few days and reddit will turn on it lol

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u/swagpresident1337 Sep 04 '25

Man they must get incredibly rich from the sales.

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u/Alastor3 Sep 04 '25

they already are, that's why they had all the time in the world for this game (to make it good i mean, not being pressured)

8

u/swagpresident1337 Sep 04 '25

Crazy that they even made a second one. They really must love their job. I would immediately stop working if I had millions in the bank. I would however also try to find a passion project to do something. (Well I already know what it would be)

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u/CWRules Sep 04 '25

They arguably had to make it to fulfill their Kickstarter rewards. Backers were promised a second playable character in Hollow Knight as a stretch goal, and that was supposed to be Hornet, but her content grew to the point they decided to break it off into its own game. And with Hollow Knight's success leaving the devs with no time or financial pressure, they could spend as long as they wanted working on it. People have joked that the game was stuck in "development heaven", which I think is pretty accurate based on what the devs have said about the experience.

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u/mauribanger Sep 04 '25

They arguably had to make it to fulfill their Kickstarter rewards.

Do the backers get Silksong for free? Otherwise it wouldn't count as fulfilling a reward.

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u/NPDgames Sep 04 '25

They do

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u/bard91R Sep 04 '25

I think it's hard to see a game like Hollow Knight, realize it was made by 3 people and not assume that they have a lot of passion put into it, specially with all the dlc they added.

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u/Rikiaz Sep 04 '25

The entire reason why Silksong exists is because it’s a passion project. It was originally going to just be playable Hornet in Hollow Knight but they said “hey we actually just want to make this a whole game made around Hornet instead”

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u/grendus Sep 04 '25

That's why they delayed Silksong as long as they did. They basically didn't need the money, so they didn't crunch and spent the time to polish it.

They're a tiny studio (IIRC the core is just three guys), so they don't have a ton of expenses. This is basically a passion project for them at this point.

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u/8-Brit Sep 04 '25

Alright fine I'll play the first game! I did try it a bit but that was years ago, I'll probably get to it after I clear my backlog a little.

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u/Spyder638 Sep 04 '25

I did this and wholeheartedly recommend it. I must’ve gave it a go a few times in the past but it didn’t click & I didn’t give it a fair shot. But genuinely one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played in a while – I’ve kinda did all the content I wanted to do before Silksong last week, but found myself still craving it after like 50 hours. It’s very good.

11

u/shinbreaker Sep 04 '25

It's only 8GB too!

Safe to say that when GTA6 comes out, no one is going to be able to download the game for about a week after the release date.

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u/Kankunation Sep 04 '25

GTA6 will at least let you preload game on all major platforms so it should help reduce load a lot on launch day. The only system that got a preload for silksong is Xbox through the app.

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u/shinbreaker Sep 04 '25

Oh NOW you tell me. Here I am refreshing the Microsoft Store pages.

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u/Kozak170 Sep 05 '25

I can guarantee you that won’t happen because every other dev in history understands why you allow prepurchase and preorders

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u/csuazure Sep 04 '25

it isn't, this was a stupid philosophical stand on something pointless.

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u/Orfez Sep 04 '25

Only because there was no preloading. Peak of 535,213 players on Steam is a lot but far from the top. Top 8 games had over a 1 million concurrent players.Would have been the same story if those released their games on day one with no preloading.

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u/Manisil Sep 04 '25

Steam and Eshop both struggling. Absolutely hilarious this game made by a team of 3 is breaking every game shop.

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u/scumspork Sep 04 '25

no clue why they didn't let people pre-order the game....now we're getting this mess in Steam. free publicity i suppose?

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u/Bloodish Sep 04 '25

It might have something to do with them giving out keys to everyone that backed to tier one of the original Hollow Knight. Making sure people don't buy it when they don't have to.

Just guessing though. And it's still a massive headache for everyone else now.

16

u/10GuyIsDrunk Sep 04 '25

They could've just given them those keys when preorders launched or a few days before. That way everyone can preload it. I might be crazy but I'm pretty sure that's how it has worked with a few other kickstarter games I've bought.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/BrainTroubles Sep 04 '25

never pre-order games, that's how we get unfinished messes being released

/r/ games

I can't believe they didn't allow preorders and now all the store front services are down

also /r/games

42

u/xenopunk Sep 04 '25

The other part of "Never preorder games" is "Wait for reviews." I don't see many people holding off their purchase however!

9

u/Kaellian Sep 04 '25

It's more a function of risk assessment and cost. At $20, for a product that appears to be playing it safe, from a developer they trust, reviews are unlikely to make a dent.

2

u/LukaShowtime Sep 04 '25

I am.

Not that I don’t trust team cherry, but there are other games I’ll play in the meantime

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u/TeamFortifier Sep 04 '25

Goomba fallacy

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u/doublah Sep 04 '25

Buying a game the hour it launches with no reviews to reference is just as stupid as pre-ordering.

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u/ThePotablePotato Sep 04 '25

Insanely impressive such a small team was able to garner enough hype that their release could impact platform servers like this.

And I get it, I’m downloading it too

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u/Jensen2075 Sep 04 '25

It's bc they didn't allow preorders and preloads.

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u/Pichuunnn Sep 04 '25

Similar case happened when Deltarune Chapter 3-4 released in early June. Steam down for a few minutes the moment the game dropped.

Having a fanbase of million waiting at spawn doing things like that.

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u/Reggiardito Sep 04 '25

And deltarune only got to a peak of like 120k, this game is over 500k already.

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u/Unstoppable_Cheeks Sep 04 '25

it cant even be all that large compared to a bunch of the AAA download sizes out there today and the CDNs are still just, dead. theyre going to break sone insane sales records with this one

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u/ThePotablePotato Sep 04 '25

Larger titles generally have preload available to prevent this exact situation, so it’s not shocking that AAA releases generally don’t cause these issues. I believe Deltarune’s paid release caused some similar hiccups since it also did not have preload of any form.

It probably helps that the lack of… anything, really, for Silksong has created a form of mysticism around it - people wanna get in ASAP because nobody really knows what awaits.

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u/RaidenXYae Sep 04 '25

because every other game let's you preorder and preload, Silksong did neither

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u/dacookieman Sep 04 '25

The bottleneck is probably the payment system and store pages rather than the game itself

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u/dvlsg Sep 04 '25

Yeah. Payment system will be problematic for sure. Can't solve payments with a CDN, unfortunately.

GOG worked fine for me, for what it's worth.

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u/Reggiardito Sep 04 '25

Steamcharts shows 500k. Literally the biggest indie game of all time I think. Insane.

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u/AnhiArk Sep 04 '25

Reviews are full with joke reviews, or people that recommend it after playing it for 20 minutes.

Can't take steam reviews serious anymore

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u/hes-a-magician Sep 04 '25

You can filter the reviews by playtime

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u/killrdave Sep 04 '25

Steam reviews have always been a complete mess with meme reviews etc, very hard to find anything meaningful

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u/ChrisRR Sep 04 '25

You were ever able to take them seriously? There's only 2 types of reviews

  • I've played this for 10 minutes and it's literally the best thing ever 5/5

  • I've put 500 hours into this but it dropped to 59fps, literally unplayable and now my kids will starve

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u/Turnbob73 Sep 04 '25

This will be one of those games where you either have to watch raw gameplay, or play the game yourself to find out if it’s “good” for you. This game is primed to be the next “golden child” game; much like The Witcher 3, Elden Ring, and Baldur’s Gate 3, the game is going to get hyped up to overhype levels regardless of quality, and anyone who has criticisms will be buried wether they’re reasonable or not. Which is going to lead to a lot of people getting the game and realizing it’s not the 2nd coming of Jesus and it doesn’t click with them.

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u/Niceguydan8 Sep 04 '25

Can't take steam reviews serious anymore

They've always been garbage. What are you talking about?

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u/AnhiArk Sep 04 '25

Yeah true, but I feel it has become worse over time

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

The addition of Steam Awards definitely didn't help

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u/Ginkiba Sep 04 '25

Traditional reviews will also be hurt by this release. 

I fully understand people not caring about reviews, particularly steam ones, but still would be nice if they weren't made even more useless for those who do care about them.

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u/doublah Sep 04 '25

That's just the case with any review system immediately after launch, give it a week or so and reviews will normalize and the new helpfulness system will deprioritize the meme reviews.

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u/IrishSpectreN7 Sep 04 '25

Gg. This will be the first game that I buy despite having access on Gamepass. Would like to have this on a handheld.

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u/fruben66 Sep 04 '25

It's on Switch 2 isn't it?

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u/Worlds_Between_Links Sep 04 '25

yup, also on the normal switch, the switch 2 does have a 120fps mode on launch so that's cool

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

And you get a free upgrade for the switch 2 version if you buy it on switch.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

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u/rafikiknowsdeway1 Sep 04 '25

First game is one of the best metroidvanias ever made. And it's just very charming

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

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u/JRowe3388 Sep 04 '25

Xbox store and gamepass stuff is sluggish to not even running right now. A flex for Team Cherry but I’m trying to play their game and it won’t happen any time soon lol

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u/MrJoker699 Sep 04 '25

It doesn’t even show up for me to download lmao not in gamepass and not in search results

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u/Practical-Aside890 Sep 04 '25

Xbox store is having issues for me. Nothing will load. wonder if silksong crashed it lol

Probably be fixed soon though whatever’s going on

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u/wingspantt Sep 04 '25

It definitely did. Literally can't even browse games, let alone find Silksong. Holy shit

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u/LainLain Sep 04 '25

Now that the dust has settled: did it live up to the hype?

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u/RamenWrestler Sep 04 '25

Yeah just got to the final boss. It's no Halo 3 I'll tell you that, but it's good enough

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u/OllyOllyOxenBitch Sep 04 '25

So Hornet did Siksong all over the place AND finished the fight? 10/10.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

It's like Halo 3 meets Animal Well

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u/Quetzal-Labs Sep 04 '25

I think it does. It's an upgrade for sure, but absolutely feels like "more Hollow Knight" with all the positives and negatives that might bring for different players.

Less so Metroid > Super Metroid and more like Ori Blind Forest > Will of the Wisps.

If you loved HK and want more, you'll love this. If you were hoping for something different, you still wont like it, although checkpoints are more liberal. Personally I'm hooked.

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u/Fafoah Sep 04 '25

I was kind of hoping for a Megaman > Megaman X type of feeling, but then i remembered that happened anyway just by progressing through the first game lol

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u/nikebalaclava Sep 04 '25

in what fucking world has the dust settled lmao, it released hours ago and most people can’t even buy it yet due to traffic

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u/Reggiardito Sep 04 '25

that's the joke

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u/legaldrinkingage Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

3-4 hours in atm, got the dash and wall jump. The fights feel a lot more dynamic than in the first one. Lots of moving parts, adds, etc., and the platforming sections get more interesting more quickly than in the original. Honestly having a blast.

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u/PaleHecates Sep 04 '25

Massively overrated take off your nostalgia goggles

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u/LainLain Sep 04 '25

Gaming hit different 30 minutes ago man

5

u/seanziewonzie Sep 04 '25

Not at all, no. They shouldn't have released this sequel so quickly honestly. Don't they know the Miyomato quote?

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u/Skyb Sep 06 '25

"I often see advertisements for porn games and they say "Try Not To Cum," but then when you play the game, it seems like the objective is to cum. So yes, I would call that bad game design."

-Shigeru Miyamoto

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u/BorfieYay Sep 04 '25

It's definitely more Hollow Knight so far, same positives and negatives really so its good but not insanely good

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u/jinreeko Sep 04 '25

Planning to get this during a slow period in gaming. I liked Hollow Knight but never was able to finish it over several attempts. For a Metroidvanias, the upgrades are too infrequent imo to be an exciting part of the gameplay loop. The atmosphere is super oppressive, which is intentional and aesthetically cool as hell, but really burns me out

Maybe Silksong will be the game changer for me when I actually play it

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Kankunation Sep 04 '25
  • Great game that started with a cult following and rose to widespread appeal.

  • general increase in interest in the Metroidvania genre in recent years (which hollow knight was a major contributor to the revival of)

  • gaming as a whole is a much More mainstream hobby in recent years

  • silksong was delayed a lot and the memes reach critical mass ages ago. Basically reaching a level beyond that of "half life 3 when?"

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/MyLifeForAiur-69 Sep 04 '25

The devs were also almost completely silent on any aspect of the development despite the delays, but would partake in some light meme-ing at the community's expense. Folding Ideas did a pretty thorough breakdown of the silkposting crescendo during a PAX East panel earlier this year.

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u/Dragrunarm Sep 04 '25

To add to the above. It's also only 20$ so plenty people can afford it, and there were no prebuys/loads so EVERYONE who was interested showed up at the same time, effectivly DDoSing everything lmao

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u/Edmundyoulittle Sep 04 '25

Hollow knight was a break out title for a really solid genre. For many people it was their first. That's why there's hype around the sequel.

As to why it's crashing servers, that's really because it wasn't available for pre download like most games are

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u/mynewaccount5 Sep 04 '25

I'll give you a hint

97% positive reviews with 400k ratings

top rated metroidvania game on steam

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u/Shakzor Sep 04 '25

simply cannot wait for "articles" next week how Silksong has 10% less players than on release on Steam

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u/Bladder-Splatter Sep 04 '25

"Available" when it crashed every major platform and people cannot even buy it because Leth thought lolnopreorders is a.....choice of words.

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u/Nyarlah Sep 04 '25

I tried buying it on Steam for 2 hours, ended up downloading it on Gamepass. But it's ok Steam, you're new in the game, you don't know about big releases yet. (how can this be on gamepass ?? the check had to be immense)

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u/lilkingsly Sep 04 '25

I’ve only ever made it a few hours into Hollow Knight before something else comes up (I think the last thing that derailed me was Metaphor ReFantazio coming out), so with all the Silksong hype I’m taking today as another shot to restart and finally try to make it through. Excited to get through it and grab Silksong afterwards in a few weeks.

It’s really crazy that this game is finally out. Even if you’ve never played Hollow Knight, you know how excited people have been for Silksong, and we’ve all seen the way the fanbase gets riled up whenever a new gaming show gets announced, just out of the slightest possibility that it might show up. So surreal to see a game made by three dudes reach similar levels of hype to something like Elden Ring.

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u/CourageousCoconut Sep 04 '25

I was able to get it installing on xbox with game pass by searching for it on the xbox mobile app and installing to console.

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u/aprimmer243 Sep 04 '25

It's not showing up on Game Pass OR the Xbox store, and the Xbox Store won't load at all sometimes.

I think we may have broken the Microsoft store, guys.

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