At long last, Hollow Knight: Silksong is releasing today, September 4, but the rollout hasn’t gone entirely smoothly right out of the gate. People are reporting issues on Steam, with players saying they cannot launch the game or even add it to their cart. Despite those issues, the game has blasted off to more than 75,000 concurrent players in the first 10 minutes of availability on Steam alone.
For context, that’s more concurrent players than the original Hollow Knight’s all-time record of around 72,000.
The game’s store page on Steam even totally vanished from the Steam home page. Players also reported that they cannot access the Steam store at all–this can happen sometimes at the launch of a new Steam sale. However, there aren’t too many instances we can recall of this happening for a game launch.
These issues aren’t affecting everyone, as other players are reporting they’re able to buy and download Silksong from Steam. On Switch 2, the game is apparently encountering issues for some players as well on the eShop. On Game Pass, Silksong is encountering issues as well. Game Pass members can initiate a download of the game remotely via Xbox.com.
As usual, your mileage may vary–many people appear to be booting into Silksong just fine. Despite the struggles for some, the game has already reached 75,000 concurrents on Steam in the first 10 minutes of availability.
Silksong had a huge amount of pre-release hype due in part to the game’s lengthy development and status as a game people thought they might never get to play. But the day has finally come, and people appear to be flocking to Silksong.
As announced previously, Silksong costs $20 at launch on all platforms. There will be a free Switch 2 upgrade for original Switch owners.
What is Hollow Knight: Silksong?
Hollow Knight: Silksong is the long-awaited sequel to Team Cherry’s 2017 game Hollow Knight. The game sold more than 15 million copies and was highly regarded critically. The sequel, Silksong, was originally going to be DLC for Hollow Knight, but Team Cherry said its scope grew to the point that it had become a full, standalone game. Silksong has players becoming the character Hornet in a 2D platforming world. The game has new enemy types and bosses, and the Greymoor area is among the biggest Team Cherry has ever created.
Why did Hollow Knight: Silksong take so long to come out?
Team Cherry founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen said Silksong was not stuck in development hell or anything like that. The enormous success of the 2017 game allowed the Australia-based developers to develop the follow-up at their own pace.
“It was never stuck or anything,” Gibson told Bloomberg. “It was always progressing. It’s just the case that we’re a small team, and games take a lot of time. There wasn’t any big controversial moment behind it.”
One of the reasons why Silksong did not come out sooner was due to how, as previously stated, it was originally envisioned as an expansion to Hollow Knight. As for why Team Cherry went quiet and didn’t discuss development updates with fans over the years, Gibson said the team opted not to because, “All we could really say is, ‘We’re still working on it.'”
Pellen added: “Instead of popping up and bugging people for the sake of it, it felt like our actual responsibility was just to work on the game.”
At one point, Silksong was officially scheduled to launch before June 2023, and Pellen said the team did “genuinely believe” the game would make it out then. But that didn’t happen, of course.
The wait could have been even longer. Gibson said Team Cherry has a development structure that allows its members to “see results fasts,” with ideas turning into real elements of the game “almost immediately.” That was a fun way to work, Gibson said, but it also presented challenges.
“I remember at some point I just had to stop sketching,” Gibson said. “Because I went, ‘Everything I’m drawing here has to end up in the game. That’s a cool idea, that’s in. That’s a cool idea, tha’ts in.’ You realize, ‘If I don’t stop drawing, this is going to take 15 years to finish.'”
Is Hollow Knight: Silksong on Game Pass?
Hollow Knight: Silksong is available at launch for Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers. Alternatively, as mentioned, it can be purchased outright for $20.
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