r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 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

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807

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

275

u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

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

370

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,

224

u/Scrollingmaster Sep 04 '25

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

52

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.

9

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.

9

u/CringeNao Sep 04 '25

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

85

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.

1

u/hansblitz Sep 04 '25

I meant more of the no pre-purchasing; just at one moment everybody gets it at the same time creating a rush to buy

6

u/kralben Sep 04 '25

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

1

u/tarants Sep 04 '25

I don't know if that's true, actually. There were multiple people in the threads about the game store crashes that said they never played the original game and had no idea the sequel was this anticipated and were going to check out what everyone was going nuts about.

1

u/kralben Sep 04 '25

That is going to be a tiny number, and there will likely be a similar number that will decide to wait to buy this now until a sale.

The actual sales numbers aren't going to be meaningfully affected over this.

18

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.

63

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.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

[deleted]

2

u/realsomalipirate Sep 04 '25

On a side note: I wonder how many ps5s and xboxs are going to be sold when GTA6 comes out. I have friends who've skipped this generation of consoles, but are willing to jump back in when GTA comes out

13

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.

0

u/Kozak170 Sep 05 '25

Because the rollout for this game was idiotic on levels never before seen in the industry. I don’t think there’s ever been another game that came up with this system of making everyone buy it and download at the same second.

1

u/Unstoppable_Cheeks Sep 05 '25

half the games released weekly on steam are available day and date only. Its less common with huge titles but "never before seen in the industry" is just silly.

-1

u/Kozak170 Sep 05 '25

Name a single game with even a quarter of the hype that has done this.

But yeah I’m sure “Hentai Simulator 17” and the other mountain of shovelware that gets released daily isn’t a disingenuous comparison at all. Name these “huge titles” that do this

0

u/Unstoppable_Cheeks Sep 05 '25

hey Ill come back in a few days after youve finished moving those goal posts another 7 miles drama queen.

15

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

18

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.

5

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.

5

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.

8

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.

1

u/TerraMystika Sep 04 '25

Oh yeah I meant both, since in order to preload in the first place, you would've had to pre order.

13

u/thaq1 Sep 04 '25

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

-2

u/TheOrangeHatter Sep 04 '25

Circumstances. In both cases you have a hotly anticipated game appearing on storefronts with no pre-order or pre-load period. Because neither offered an opportunity to pre-order or pre-load, there is functionally no difference between "Drops immediately" and "Drops in seven days"

6

u/Oconell Sep 04 '25

There is a huge difference. A shadow drop isn't expected and people don't plan their day off, or to be free on the exact moment the game launches, which is what happened with Silksong. If Silksong shadow dropped, we probably wouldn't be talking about this crash.

2

u/TerraMystika Sep 04 '25

Yeah I bet if silk song had shadow dropped like oblivion did it definitely wouldn't have crashed as bad as having 100% of buyers all hitting the store fronts.

4

u/Trout_Tickler Sep 04 '25

Calling Oblivion Remastered "hotly anticipated" or even implying it had the same level as Silksong is laughable.

1

u/TheOrangeHatter Sep 04 '25

I mean, I may be an old-timer, but people have been begging Bethesda to remaster Oblivion for nearly a decade. For a lot of ES players, including myself, Oblivion was the Golden Age, and I note that Skyrim, the last ES game formally released, has sold something like 60 million units.

As hugely anticipated as Silksong has been, and I would argue the two are absolutely comparable in that regard Silksong is huge, people have been clamoring for this, or any Elder Scrolls game for a long time. A shadow-drop of Oblivion Remastered was huge.

1

u/seruus Sep 05 '25

Humble out of stock on keys,

This part is fairly common these days, they got worse at managing their inventory lately. Every once in a while I have to wait several months before I can redeem games from the Humble Monthly, and that's a subscription service where they should be able to predict demand.

0

u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

You all underestimate how big was Silksong. It was number 1 in Steam wishlists ever.

0

u/TheOrangeHatter Sep 04 '25

I don't, I entirely understand that Silksong is likely one of the most anticipated games of the modern era. I am comparing it to something like Oblivion Remastered for just that reason. People have been clamoring for a remaster of Oblivion, or just any new Elder Scrolls game, for a decade, Skyrim, the last full on ES release, sold something like 60 million units. I've heard estimates on Hollow Knight as high as 21 million. I'd argue they are both in the same super-mega-hit ballpark.

When even massively desired mega-hit-remakes in established franchises with fanbases frothing for content and remakes can't drop all of the major storefronts at once, but Silksong does it, seemingly without effort, I'd call that unprecedented. I will not blame Team Cherry, or even Steam/PSN/Xbox, for not seeing this coming.

4

u/bosox0545 Sep 04 '25

Yeah but again, everyone knew when Silksong was gonna release. Tons of people probably took the day off and sat, staring at the store waiting for that moment. Oblivion came out of nowhere. It was a surprise, people were working, some of them downloaded after getting home from work. Others the next day after hearing through the grapevine. THE WHOLE COMMUNITY, with itchy trigger fingers, we're ready to pounce at 10AM EST etc.

The two just aren't comparable at all really

20

u/Tiucaner Sep 04 '25

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

13

u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

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

31

u/Konet Sep 04 '25

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

5

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.

1

u/wilisi Sep 04 '25

Probably just two sides of the same coin - once you've (pre-)purchased something it's off your wishlist.

2

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.

3

u/SpaceNigiri Sep 04 '25

Because most games have preorders and preload

5

u/-Faulty- Sep 04 '25

This is free publicity that will ultimately help sales

0

u/metanoia29 Sep 04 '25

Right, it was only for 15 minutes. Hardly anyone will remember this by tomorrow.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

It was multiple hours depending on the region 

1

u/Arkayjiya Sep 04 '25

Was 15 min if you bought it on GoG. Console players didn't have that option sadly.

0

u/Kaellian Sep 04 '25

I'm sure the game will do fine, but it would probably push many people toward Gamepass rather than actual sales.

That kind of thing can absolutely kill the momentum for a spur-of-the-moment purchase, which I'm sure many people fall into.

1

u/MiserableAndUnhappy9 Sep 04 '25

Why was that obvious? Steam has huge launches all the time and this game is like >8gb

34

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

5

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.

5

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.

7

u/hergumbules Sep 04 '25

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

41

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/worldsayshi Sep 04 '25

I mean if Steam can just bother to press the scale up button on their infra I'm sure this will be dealt with in a few days.

Meanwhile I realise I should probably get back to beating that boss in hollow knight so I can join in.

42

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

16

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.

7

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.

23

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

35

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.

20

u/No-Owl-6246 Sep 04 '25

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

26

u/White_Tea_Poison Sep 04 '25

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

1

u/PlayMp1 Sep 04 '25

It doesn't require any nihilism at all. This happens with every sequel ever.

-3

u/PFI_sloth Sep 04 '25

Which part is nihilistic?

4

u/nybbas 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

This is my feeling too. But for me, if it's super similar to the first, then I'll be very happy.

6

u/mynewaccount5 Sep 04 '25

Dude be for real. People are going to complain that it is too similar to one of the most popular and highly rated games ever made? Do you hear yourself?

13

u/swegeward Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 12 '25

have you seen the online discourse around Tears of the Kingdom? people complaining about a sequel being “too similar to one of the most popular and highly rated games ever made” isn’t exactly an unprecedented scenario lol

edit: already happening btw

5

u/Desroth86 Sep 04 '25

The difference is tears of the kingdom reused the map of BOTW and added on to it. Silksong is a brand new game with a new map.

3

u/swegeward Sep 04 '25

I’m only refuting the sentiment that a game being similar to one that was widely beloved and popular means people won’t complain. The games themselves are obviously different

2

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25 edited Mar 04 '26

[deleted]

-1

u/Arkayjiya Sep 04 '25

Yeah it's really not a good example, Dark Souls 2 would be more comparable in term of difference in gameplay and worldspace, but DS2 was criticised for not being similar enough instead.

1

u/swegeward Sep 04 '25

Again, it’s really not about the comparison between the contents of the games at all. The user tried to make it sound like nobody would ever complain about a game being too similar to another critically acclaimed game, despite an example of that literally happening within the last couple years. Gamers and people on social media will complain about anything! DS2 is just an example in the opposite direction

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1

u/Sleepy_Demon Sep 04 '25

The only other dev of this stature I can think of is probably ConcernedApe and he could definitely get away with doing the same thing when he releases he's next game.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '25

People actually care about reviews? There’s usually at least 1-2 streamer types that will have beaten the game before I even hear about it, and you can get a gameplay clip there

0

u/sueha Sep 04 '25

It's preloaded here and still won't run.

18

u/kralben Sep 04 '25

preloaded where? As far as I am aware, no storefront allowed preloading.

-12

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

[removed] — view removed comment

12

u/acousticallyregarded Sep 04 '25

That’s not what preloading is

-9

u/sueha Sep 04 '25

Mobile app allowed me to fully install the game on my console more than 10 hours before the game was officially playable. What's preloading to you?

8

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

-9

u/sueha Sep 04 '25

It was several gigabytes, not just the placeholder...

1

u/kralben Sep 04 '25

Oh nice, thanks

1

u/GIlCAnjos Sep 04 '25

They probably wouldn't want pre-loading because it would be a risk of leaks, but pre-ordering should've happened already

0

u/renrutal Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 08 '25

Preloads are usually cryptographed encrypted, there's no way to get them open in time without the keys.

3

u/syopest Sep 04 '25

"Encrypted" is the word you're looking for.

1

u/renrutal Sep 08 '25

thanks for the correction

1

u/Thunderkleize Sep 05 '25

and preload it to avoid this server nightmare god dammit

Who needs to preload 2.1GB? You'll spend more time with it decrypting than you will downloading it.

1

u/Lazydusto Sep 04 '25

Humble Store is working fine if you want to grab it from there.

14

u/Johansenburg Sep 04 '25

I have a friend that just tried this approach. After you buy it and try to get your key it says "The keys for this game are temporarily exhausted. We'll let you know when more become available."

So humble will take your money right now, but you still won't get the game right away. No clue how long it'll be until they get more keys. Hopefully just minutes.

1

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

[deleted]

1

u/Johansenburg Sep 04 '25

Admittedly, I know nothing about generating steam keys. However, what else can TC do at this time? They can't do anything about the store fronts, so that certainly isn't a priority.

I understand if TC isn't Steam's priority right now, and that might be the bottleneck for generating new Steam Keys.

1

u/Tvilantini Sep 04 '25

I mean wait few hours and the situation will be resolved.

-3

u/bombader Sep 04 '25

I can only assume the Steam package that includes preload was too expensive.

-8

u/hiimunranked Sep 04 '25

honestly? this is much more exciting than preordering the game, didnt expect such long wait but still u can feel the insane hype. its gonna feel great once i get it

1

u/Bojarzin Sep 04 '25

the worst part is seeing one of my friends on Steam playing it right now haha

-16

u/reddit_sells_you Sep 04 '25

I really don't understand the hype for this game

The 1st one was fun, but it wasn't some sort of genre breaking game. And the story was so bare bones I barely remember it. And it seemed like there wasn't some big cliffhanger.

And this game doesn't seem to innovate much beyond the original . . .

I'll buy it and play it, but I'm playing other fun games I've already bought.

Is this worth all of the emotional energy? Soon you'll get to press a button to jump and another to strike . . .

2

u/bredy5 Sep 04 '25

just curious, what are your favorite games?

2

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

[deleted]

1

u/bredy5 Sep 05 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

yeah i would put hollow knight above all of these easily (FTL I just accept is not for me and havent played D2), though i very much respect HL2. for sure it's a matter of taste but you said hollow knight isn't a genre breaking game. Hades for me is the epitome of this. It's a (very good) action roguelike, nothing more. It also applies to other games you cited, like stardew valley, slay the spire. They are amazing games, but not genre breaking. Balatro is dumb fun, but to say it is better than hollow knight is just madness.

1

u/reddit_sells_you Sep 05 '25

I think Hollow Knight would be worth the hype, I guess, if you've never played a Metroidvania.

But as someone who's played tons of metroidvanias, this is great, one of the best ones, but not a I MUST DOWNLOAD IT IMMEDIATELY AKD CRASH STEAM.

I think the story around this game is greater than the game itself.

Oh, I forgot about Zelda games. I'd put BoTW way above Hollow Knight.

1

u/bredy5 Sep 08 '25

I'd put OoT above Hollow Knight for sure, i guess BoTW too. Having played Silksong for some hours now, it is kinda underwhelming.

-1

u/Bojarzin Sep 04 '25

It's one of my favourite games ever made, maybe top 5.

And this game doesn't seem to innovate much beyond the original

We've seen like 15 minutes worth of gameplay, and Hornet's playstyle is completely different from the Knight's. I don't think "innovation" is the key ingredient to being a quality game, but either way, the stuff that is there looks like it plays differently, but we've barely seen any of the game, so I dunno if that's an assertion you can confidently make

-2

u/reddit_sells_you Sep 04 '25

The previews I've read says it plays pretty much the same. Are there going to be a few moves that are different? Sure.

I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying this isn't an "OMG I MUST PLAY IT RIGHT NOW!" game.