Hollow Knight: Silksongis breaking Steam

Players eagerly awaiting the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong this morning faced significant challenges when trying to purchase and download the game from Steam. Reports indicate that many users encountered issues loading store pages, adding the game to their carts, and completing transactions. This mirrors a surge of complaints on social media and a notable spike in outage reports on DownDetector, which documented over 11,000 issues within minutes of the game’s 10 AM Eastern release. Despite these server challenges, SteamDB indicates that over 100,000 players managed to join the game concurrently at the time of writing. However, the problems extended beyond just Silksong, with users also experiencing delays and errors when downloading other titles and syncing cloud saves on Steam. Interestingly, another platform, the Nintendo eShop, allowed for a smooth purchase and download of the Switch 2 version of Silksong without similar complications. As of now, the game remains unavailable for purchase on the PS5 online store. This kind of server strain is not entirely new for Steam; issues have been prevalent since 2010, with significant outages recorded during peak times, including a DDoS attack that affected service during the 2015 holiday season. However, in recent years, Steam has shown improved stability, even as it handles massive data loads ranging from 15Gbps to over 30Gbps. Notably, unlike many anticipated releases, Silksong did not offer pre-purchase or pre-load options, which may have exacerbated the influx of players overwhelming the servers. One user on Bluesky expressed disbelief at the decision not to allow pre-loading, suggesting that the current issues were predictable. This situation is ongoing, and further updates will be provided as more information comes to light.