"The vessel must hold." – but then the servers didn't.
After years of anticipation, September 4, 2025, finally marked the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong, a sequel to the 2017 critical and commercial juggernaut that was indie title Hollow Knight.
Players worldwide were ecstatic to experience what the small team at Australian studio Team Cherry had cooked up for them... Only to find that the servers of Steam, the Microsoft Store, PlayStation Store and Nintendo eShop were underprepared for the rush of excited fans.
Years of Anticipation for Silksong
Taking inspiration from a wide variety of popular video game classics, the first Hollow Knight merged Metroidvania gameplay with the creative character design from the developer's previous title Hungry Knight and a beautifully-handdrawn, dark and moody underground world, evoking an atmosphere similar to that of titles like Super Metroid. The game – quickly considered one of the greatest of all time – practically begged for a sequel.
Accordingly, Hollow Knight: Silksong was first announced on February 14, 2019, with early gameplay and character reveals following shortly after. It appeared at E3 2019, with Nintendo featuring it on Treehouse Live, and by the end of that year, Team Cherry shared soundtrack previews and development updates. In 2020, riddles teased new characters, and Edge magazine revealed exclusive details. Long stretches of silence fueled community anticipation.
From 2022 onward, excitement grew despite delays, with trailers shown at the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, confirmations for multiple platforms, and continued reassurances of progress. Only in 2025, Silksong re-emerged with a small snippet shown in the first Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, with more to follow during Gamescom, culminating in a major reveal. After years of sparse updates and mounting hype, Team Cherry finally confirmed its release date: September 4, 2025.
Hours of Silence
Needless to say, fans were pracitically glued to their screens, wanting to finally satisfy their curiosity by indulging in their beloved fantasy world and its new settings, characters and gameplay ideas. Many development studios quickly recognized the sheer scale of attention the new release had garnered and delayed their titles last-minute to avoid having to share a release window with Silksong.
The largest players in the industry, however, were seemingly underprepared for the event: With hundreds of thousands of people flocking to their digital storefront all at once, the servers of Valve, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo gave way, with – at times – only the Xbox's Microsoft Store remaining accessible, albeit unable to process any purchases.
Only a few hours later however, the disruptions had been overcome. Within not even a day, the title hit more than 535,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, compared to a peak of about 73,000 for the original Hollow Knight. The fact that the servers of the world's largest digital video game vendors crashed would be notable on its own, but the culprit being Silksong – a game which mainly relied on word-of-mouth marketing due to its long and secretive development process and sudden release – is a clear sign of structural change in the video game industry.
But what do you think? Did you get to download the game yet? Or were you completely immune to the hype? Let us know in the comments!