Hollow Knight: Silksong is breaking Steam

Valve's usually stable platform struggles thanks in part to lack of pre-loading options.

See full article...

 

[internetomancer]

I'm really not into Metroidvanias, but this hype has me looking at the store page.

I am not either.

HK is one of the best Metroidvania's I've ever played-- maybe better than Ori, Dead Cells, Blood Stained, but it's still a Metroidvania at heart. Just better setting and controls. So I eventually got bored.

Should add HK was also hard. Not quite Dark-Souls hard, but in the same zipcode. There were a couple bosses that took me ~5 tries. Also a few impossible bosses for the try-hards out there.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

I'm really not into Metroidvanias, but this hype has me looking at the store page.

It's not on a launch sale or anything, so there's no rush. Wait for the scuttlebutt and then buy it if the hype proves out.

 

[MHStrawn]

Silksong has got to have some of the best marketing per return ratio of any game. Basically no marketing outside of blips of mentions at Xbox and Nintendo shows (that were probably provided to them since by that point it had already been fever pitch for years) and it's bound to get obscene sales for an indie.

It's astounding how much good will you can generate by simply building a good game. It's why a think we're on the cusp of a great transition in the gaming world.

Indie-developed games took more than 50% of gaming revenues in 2024. That number has increased year after year after year as indie devs can deliver more impressive visuals at lower costs and AAA publishers continue to insist on focus-group-inspired, MBA-approved games designed that exploit games while focusing on shareholder returns.

Hollow Knight is a tiny outfit, with really only two devs and 3 audio people.
Hades2, Clair Obscura, Stray, Animal Well....small teams unrestrained by their publisher overlords developing games for gamers is the future of the industry. As long as the brain-dead, tone-deaf publishers continue to spend hundreds of millions developing....and another hundred million marketing - dead on arrival subscription service games they are headed for a crash.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

Clair Obscura

Man, Clair Obscur was deeply weird. What a strange, strange game that was. I don't think MBAs got anywhere near that thing.

I guess I enjoyed it, but the potential endings were unsatisfying.

 

[Coolman13355]

I find it really interesting that after all these years, Metroidvanias are this popular.

I don't like Hollow Knight and will never play Silk Song but if it keeps the Metroidvania games coming I'm all for it.

Maybe I'll finally get a sequel to Shadow Complex.

I'm with you on wanting for a Shadow Complex sequel.

 

[Coolman13355]

Never heard of this game. What is it about?

I'm at least entertaining the idea you're making a joke or trolling, but the very 1st sentence of the article contains a linked article explaining what is going on.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

I find it really interesting that after all these years, Metroidvanias are this popular.

It's a game loop that's pretty addictive; explore, get blocked in most directions, eventually find some kind of item that lets you traverse in a new way, re-explore old areas, find new ways forward. There's lots and lots of ways to mix that up and keep it interesting.

 

[Resolute]

Man, Clair Obscur was deeply weird. What a strange, strange game that was. I don't think MBAs got anywhere near that thing.

I guess I enjoyed it, but the potential endings were unsatisfying.

I get why you say they were unsatisfying, but given the story, I thought they were perfect.

Here there be spoilers:
The entire game is effectively an allegory for grief and the danger of getting lost in it. While it was a false dichotomy, the endings being to either be lost permanently in your grief and never moving beyond resulting in deteriorating mental state (Maille) or of moving forward and letting the fantasy world fade into the past (Verso) were both phenomenal conclusions of the story.

It doesn't feel like it given the emotional blow of everyone fading away, but the Verso ending is the bright, 'happy' ending - where Alicia is finally able to step beyond her grief and back out into her real world. In that sense, the cast played its part in helping her (and her parents) begin to truly heal from the real Verso's death.

 

[macr0t0r]

Never heard of this game. What is it about?

Ouch! I got a good chuckle, but others down-voted you to oblivion. This is why we need the sarcasm emoticon.

 

[Socks Mingus]

In my experience, Steam tends to choke up pretty bad right when the Summer and Winter Sales start. Usually for three or four hours, it's very chancy.

I wasn't really watching during this Summer Sale, but it was definitely unhappy last winter.

So, Silksong is having a similar impact as the biggest sales Valve has. All by itself.

I've been fighting Steam all morning just trying to see my Discovery Queue. Now I know why. Thought it was my Internet.

TIL there are people who deliberately look at their discovery queue & there are apparently people who even download & install games soon after they buy them!

Anyway, back to gazing with trepidation at my ridiculous and somehow still growing backlog... this is how you play Steam right?

 

[darkdog]

No other game I've ever purchased has had such atrocious input lag and lack of precision in the movement. It's definitely an issue with the game itself. That's not even mentioning the fact that the game loop is simply not fun, there's a lack of progression, etc.

Any issue with input lag has to be on your end. HK is not an easy game, and with input lag / movement precision issues its harder bosses and some platforming sections would have been impossible to clear.

As for whether it's fun or not… You're in the minority for sure, but your opinion is as valid as anyone's.

 

[just6979]

Pretty sure this is an issue bigger than Steam. Yes it has had slowdowns during big launches of big games or big sales (Steam Deck launch day comes to mind), but this is not a massive game and probably isn't causing issues on its own.

Anyone who has gotten Silksong to download know how big it is? The first game is less than 8GB: I don't see Silksong being a magnitude larger than that: it'll likely be smaller than the full No Man's Sky Voyagers update at 20GB (almost as big as the previous install!)

Even the couple few NMSV patches have been around 7GB on their own, and the next expedition started yesterday so there were likely a ton of people updating last night and today, fetching anywhere from approx the same size of Hollow Knight to 3x the size.

tl;dr: This is a very good chance this a bigger network issue,not just Silksong and/or Steam.

 

[adrianovaroli]

Ugh. Have you identified a potential justification for pre-orders?

Nah, it's more of a potential justification for Calming Our Tits.

 

[darkdog]

Anyone who has gotten Silksong to download know how big it is?

The GOG offline installer for the macOS version is 2.46GB.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

FYI for those with both gens, it might make more sense for Switch 2 users to buy the Switch version and then get the free Switch 2 upgrade. In theory, you’d be able to play it on either the Switch or Switch 2.

FYI I had to bust out my Switch 1 to get the Switch version as the Switch 2 store only shows the switch 2 version. I loaded the Switch 1 version onto my Switch 2 then went to the e-shop to get the free update on the Silksong page.

 

[adrianovaroli]

No other game I've ever purchased has had such atrocious input lag and lack of precision in the movement. It's definitely an issue with the game itself. That's not even mentioning the fact that the game loop is simply not fun, there's a lack of progression, etc.

Yeah, no. I mean, if it wasn't fun for you, it wasn't fun. But the game, as attested by me and most everybody else, is tight. It's hard as nails, but doable, and precise. The heck is that about atrocious input lag.
Also it has a very defined progression with items, powers, etc that unlock new areas and stuff.

So no, that's on you.

EDIT: To be clear, it's not like the game needs defending, it's just that you could have picked some stuff to say that didn't immediately fly in the face of actual reality. Basically nobody else has ever complained about "atrocious input lag" on HK, or about its lack of progression. For example: it took me a while to start playing it, back then, because I was depressed and what I saw of the game was a melancholy mood that I wasn't sure I wanted to have to deal with. There, that's for free.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I find it really interesting that after all these years, Metroidvanias are this popular.

I don't like Hollow Knight and will never play Silk Song but if it keeps the Metroidvania games coming I'm all for it.

Maybe I'll finally get a sequel to Shadow Complex.

Man, Shadow Complex was so good. Too bad Chair (the developer) was shut down by Epic years ago.

 

[moobg]

Anyone who has gotten Silksong to download know how big it is? The first game is less than 8GB: I don't see Silksong being a magnitude larger than that: it'll likely be smaller than the full No Man's Sky Voyagers update at 20GB (almost as big as the previous install!)

On Steam the download was just over 2GB and the install is about 7.5GB.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

most games work fine in Steam Offline Mode

You have to successfully negotiate with Steam’s servers to go into offline mode though.

 

[moobg]

I don't think anyone could really have predicted the amount of traffic this would generate considering there has been zero marketing or anything. I first heard about it last??? week and now it has dropped. Not my jam, but kudos to the developers.

I get auto-scaling, etc... is a thing with Cloud services, but at a certain point it comes down to "bandwidth" and that you can't just "auto-scale". This is like a .01% event that came out of the relatively "unknown" and scaling your network for that is somewhat of a waste of money. You just limp along until it goes back to "normal".

It was, by far, the most wishlisted game on Steam. I'd say a lot of us saw this coming from a mile away on Steam (considering the store's performance during the first few hours of their sales is also awful), but I was a bit surprised that it happened on consoles too.

 

[adrianovaroli]

I am not either.

HK is one of the best Metroidvania's I've ever played-- maybe better than Ori, Dead Cells, Blood Stained, but it's still a Metroidvania at heart. Just better setting and controls. So I eventually got bored.

Should add HK was also hard. Not quite Dark-Souls hard, but in the same zipcode. There were a couple bosses that took me ~5 tries. Also a few impossible bosses for the try-hards out there.

The original game's review here probably still has comments by me and others talking about how it's also a Souls-like in that it shares a lot of concepts with that kind of game. Dying and reviving at a bonfire bench, losing your souls geo and having to go back to your dying place to recover them, stuff about combat, the difficulty, the general mood...

 

[PBG4 Dude]

It was, by far, the most wishlisted game on Steam. I'd say a lot of us saw this coming from a mile away on Steam (considering the store's performance during the first few hours of their sales is also awful), but I was a bit surprised that it happened on consoles too.

Took me 40 minutes to get my order through the Nintendo e-shop.

 

[ralphthemagician]

I guess I should probably get around to playing either the Steam or Switch copies of Hollow Knight that I've had for years and never played.

I find the hype around this game legitimately surprising. I played the original, and it was fine, but it never struck me as anything particularly special. It was also one of those games that was always on sale and/or "free" via a subscription service. So yeah, for the cost of $5.99 or less, it is a pretty good game. The most interesting thing about it, in my opinion anyway, is how successful it is as a 2D platformer in an age where 2D platformers are pretty niche.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised, though. It may just be economics at play. It's $20 at launch with no DLC, microtransactions, or ultimate edition. It's just $20 for a simple game, where the goal of the game is to have fun by actually playing the game. In an era where "ultimate editions" of new games now launch at $99, and the actual game is secondary to the progression metagame, maybe there is still room for video games as we used to know them, before "gaming" took hold of the entire industry.

 

[adrianovaroli]

I find the hype around this game legitimately surprising. I played the original, and it was fine, but it never struck me as anything particularly special. It was also one of those games that was always on sale and/or "free" via a subscription service. So yeah, for the cost of $5.99 or less, it is a pretty good game. The most interesting thing about it, in my opinion anyway, is how successful it is as a 2D platformer in an age where 2D platformers are pretty niche.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised, though. It may just be economics at play. It's $20 at launch with no DLC, microtransactions, or ultimate edition. It's just $20 for a simple game, where the goal of the game is to have fun by actually playing the game. In an era where "ultimate editions" of new games now launch at $99, and the actual game is secondary to the progression metagame, maybe there is still room for video games as we used to know them, before "gaming" took hold of the entire industry.

It's not that I want to antagonize you, or evangelize (why would I need to?), only that when people say "I find the hype/enthusiasm about X legitimately surprising" it's often a sign that there might be something they're not getting, and that they could try to work out why it is.

Let me tell you: it's not that the game costs $5.99. We like it for other reasons. It's not that it's a simple game with no DLC (original did get DLC), microtransactions, or ultimate edition (original also did get one, I could say). It was a very, very good game. You just can't see it, but perhaps you could try and figure out why other people do.

Of course, you can simply not like them, it's completely fine, really. I just find those "I don't understand why people like X" comments funny. I myself don't like a lot of stuff, like, say, male-oriented anime, but I also do understand why other people might.

 

[Mangosteen69]

Steam allows you to run offline for occasions like this. I'm not sure what the limitations are since I've never done it.

off topic but FWIW I've used steam offline many times. Games work fine, you just have to go back online once every 30 days (last I checked). Obviously any titles with online multiplayer won't work, but any single player games (like Civ V in my case) worked perfectly.

 

[rhavenn]

It was, by far, the most wishlisted game on Steam. I'd say a lot of us saw this coming from a mile away on Steam (considering the store's performance during the first few hours of their sales is also awful), but I was a bit surprised that it happened on consoles too.

Fair enough. I wasn't really paying that much attention. Still, you're not going to build out your network to handle those less than 1% events. It's just a waste of money, especially in the time frame that the game was announced to launch like 2 weeks??? ago. It's just not gonna happen.

 

[ralphthemagician]

It's not that I want to antagonize you, or evangelize (why would I need to?), only that when people say "I find the hype/enthusiasm about X legitimately surprising" it's often a sign that there might be something they're not getting, and that they could try to work out why it is.

Let me tell you: it's not that the game costs $5.99. We like it for other reasons. It's not that it's a simple game with no DLC (original did get DLC), microtransactions, or ultimate edition (original also did get one, I could say). It's a very, very good game. You just can't see it, but perhaps you could try.

Of course, you can simply not like it, it's completely fine, really. I just find those "I don't understand why people like X" comments funny. I myself don't like a lot of stuff, like, say, male-oriented anime, but I also do understand why other people might.

It's not that I don't like it—because I actually do like it. I am just surprised that a 2D platformer—ANY 2D platformer, really—is able to garner this kind of popularity. There are a lot of great 2D platformers too, but this one is an order of magnitude more popular than the rest. Last 2D platformer I can think of that peaked like this was Celeste. I found that surprising too.

It's a welcome surprise though, not one of disdain. It's a return to form. Makes me wonder if there is hope still for other genres that have been consumed by gaming mechanics.

 

[Ryan B.]

It's not that I don't like it—because I actually do like it. I am just surprised that a 2D platformer—ANY 2D platformer, really—is able to garner this kind of popularity. There are a lot of great 2D platformers too, but this one is an order of magnitude more popular than the rest. Last 2D platformer I can think of that peaked like this was Celeste. I found that surprising too.

It's a welcome surprise though, not one of disdain. It's a return to form. Makes me wonder if there is hope still for other genres that have been consumed by gaming mechanics.

Mario has entered the chat

 

[adrianovaroli]

It's not that I don't like it—because I actually do like it. I am just surprised that a 2D platformer—ANY 2D platformer, really—is able to garner this kind of popularity. There are a lot of great 2D platformers too, but this one is an order of magnitude more popular than the rest. Last 2D platformer I can think of that peaked like this was Celeste. I found that surprising too.

It's a welcome surprise though, not one of disdain. It's a return to form. Makes me wonder if there is hope still for other genres that have been consumed by gaming mechanics.

If I had to guess, it was probably a combination of factors, including

• it being a very well made game
• new enough but also not really too new (it's a souls-like metroidvania. There. You either want to play it or don't, but both kinds of games are so popular people don't really have to learn what it means.)
• with a "scrappy underdog team making it" story (kind of like Celeste's, Animal Well's and Stardew Valley's)
• hitting at the right point in time

 

[adrianovaroli]

Mario has entered the chat

I think the "indie" concept was at least heavily implied. Mario is Mario.

 

[Fatesrider]

I guess I should be glad I cant buy it until after work anyway. I hope by then we know if it runs well on the OG switch

Having been in crushes to get something "new", and not really enjoying that experience much, I've learned that coming in a few days or weeks after initial release is a pretty smooth experience. By then, the erosion on the acquisition system has removed the blocks and revealed the weaknesses and has given the distributors time to fix the problems, and the game devs to patch the inevitable something that always goes wrong at first.

Because EVERY new game/distro/update has problems. Some bigger than others, but something always needs a tweak.

In the grand scheme of things, being "first" means shit years down the line when it's a stable and enjoyable system. So waiting a couple of weeks for the kinks to be worked out is still "soon enough" to enjoy the game, and have a much better initial experience with it.

 

[eggie]

Cap'n we canna push the severs anna more. She's gonna blow if we dunna shut down. - Scotty to Captain Gabe S2:E4 The Silksong Condrundrum

But what if we tech the teching tech to fix the tech?

 

[adrianovaroli]

Having been in crushes to get something "new", and not really enjoying that experience much, I've learned that coming in a few days or weeks after initial release is a pretty smooth experience. By then, the erosion on the acquisition system has removed the blocks and revealed the weaknesses and has given the distributors time to fix the problems, and the game devs to patch the inevitable something that always goes wrong at first.

Because EVERY new game/distro/update has problems. Some bigger than others, but something always needs a tweak.

In the grand scheme of things, being "first" means shit years down the line when it's a stable and enjoyable system. So waiting a couple of weeks for the kinks to be worked out is still "soon enough" to enjoy the game, and have a much better initial experience with it.

I'm not part of them, but many people want to play the game first because they don't want to be spoiled parts of it. And... It's certainly something. I don't really mind that much, but it's there. It's also fun to learn, in Soulsbornes, from the system of vague hints left by other players instead of a guide or walkthrough. Definitely part of a singular experience.

 

[tumblrfan69]

You have to successfully negotiate with Steam’s servers to go into offline mode though.

No you don't. If you have a past login session than for the most part (unless it's extremely extremely stale) then offline mode will automatically work if Steam's servers are unreachable. It's improved in the last 2~ years with Steam Deck as many people use them away from WiFi (and Deck will pretty smoothly transition between offline and online mode without requiring any re-logging in, just as connectivity is gained/lost)

The only problem that I sometimes run into is certain games DRMs want to "phone home" and won't even try if Steam is in offline mode when they probably could.

 

[bBarou]

I don't think anyone could really have predicted the amount of traffic this would generate considering there has been zero marketing or anything.

The most wishlisted game on steam? Marketing or not, I think it was pretty predictable

 

[internetomancer]

It's not that I don't like it—because I actually do like it. I am just surprised that a 2D platformer—ANY 2D platformer, really—is able to garner this kind of popularity. There are a lot of great 2D platformers too, but this one is an order of magnitude more popular than the rest. Last 2D platformer I can think of that peaked like this was Celeste. I found that surprising too.

I'm not too surprised. 2d platformers provide a nice balance of control, screen space, visual comprehension, and interesting environment. Every 3d game has some compromises.

 

[42Kodiak42]

Pre-loading would have spread out everyone trying to buy right at launch over a period of days or weeks. It absolutely would have eased the crush. That said, if Steam et al had anticipated Silksong would actually generate this kind of consumer rush, they would have scaled up everything the way they would for a major AAA release.

I enjoy the irony of this though. You can't open a single Reddit thread (or other social media) about pre-orders being open without having a bunch of self-important twits trying to browbeat people for pre-ordering games, especially digital games. Now we have a lot of people saying "if only we could pre-load!"

The problems with pre-ordering have also been solved with refund policies on digital storefronts. The majority of such gripes now only apply for people who decide to play a game within the first hour it releases.

Also, there's a funny phenomenon I've noticed that happens within the first hour or two of an anticipated game's launch: The overall review score will often start out negative before turning positive within a few hours; this is entirely because the first people to review a game are going to be the people who had technical issues getting the game to run.

 

[Maestro4k]

You can't decrease what's already trending to zero

Nah, that's not Comcast's style. What they like to do is have a multi-hour outage followed by massive packet drops (ranging from 10% at best to 99%) for a couple of days until they finally notice they didn't fully fix whatever caused the initial outage and finish fixing it. Makes your Internet service nearly to totally unusable for those days, but it's technically up most of the time during all that bullshit.

That happens at least once every other year to me. Otherwise it's fine, but having it be effectively unusable during those periods is infuriating enough to offset the 99% of the time it's fine. The last time it happened to me was last week, so it's fresh in my mind.

 

[Bondles_9]

XBox crapped out in a particularly amusing way. The countdown timer got to zero and then Silksong just completely vanished from the store. Not in "recently added to Game Pass" or "Coming soon," didn't show up in search, just didn't exist as far as Microsoft is concerned. Haven't had time to check whether it's fixed this morning but looking forward to playing tonight.