Hollow Knight: Silksong’s Game-Breaking Issue
In a departure from our usual cinema-focused coverage, we occasionally take a look at gaming as a part of general entertainment news. Sometimes the two go hand in hand, with blockbuster adaptations like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and A Minecraft Movie gaining news articles and reviews on this site in the past year, as well as gaming-adjacent general articles. Even the writer of our review of The Fantastic Four: First Steps gave a nod to Videocult’s Rain World in his comparisons, an indie game focused on exploring a desolate, fractured dark world left behind by calamity.
As far as dark, desolate, post-apocalyptic indies go, Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight is unquestionably one of the crown jewels. While the Kickstarter’s stretch goals didn’t quite go all the way as some other crowdfunded indies have, the Australian team of three made a meal out of their budget and then some, going on to sell over 15 million copies as one of the most successful indie releases of all time. And today, after over 7 years of development, the game’s sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong released on Steam. Have we gotten the chance to play yet?
To tell the truth, most players are still waiting.
Due to the incredibly high amount of buzz surrounding the game’s release, it’s important to understand just how many people were waiting on Silksong worldwide. In its pre-release phase, the game was wishlisted by upwards of five million users on the Steam platform, beating out other indie releases like Subnautica 2, AAA releases like Borderlands 4, and even Valve’s (the company who owns Steam) very own upcoming shooter, Deadlock. Needless to say, the overwhelming amount of people waiting in line for the next entry in the Hollow Knight series was impossible for any one server to handle, causing the Steam backend to return an error message upon continuing to purchase.
This is not limited to the PC storefront—a report from Eurogamer as well as numerous consumer tweets confirm that Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo eShop servers all crashed upon Silksong‘s release. Gamers from all over the world, no matter what platform, have all united today to support a grand journey eight years in the making, and those unaware will soon know. The current workaround some have figured out is purchasing a game key through Humble Bundle, activating the code through Steam after the fact and bypassing the checkout backend. Regardless, Hollow Knight fans worldwide will be able to purchase and play the game on the platform of their choice once the server errors with each are ironed out, possibly in the next few hours. We’ll see you in Pharloom!
Hollow Knight: Silksong is now available on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch systems, as well as Xbox Game Pass and Steam.