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Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

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Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

#61

Post by SnuffBox »

NobodyNada wrote: post #59
SnuffBox wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen on Reddit it seems to have a viral meme aspect to it.

Sure, but the viral meme aspect is because HK was such a well received game and Silksong has been so highly anticipated for so long, not the other way around. It certainly contributes to the hype today, but memes are not the reason for the initial success of Hollow Knight and the anticipation of Silksong. The memes really took off around 2021-2022 after Silksong had been in development for several years with no relea…

I suppose it could be because it's a competent platformer in a world where most games are not.

Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

#62

Post by shadowgovt »

egeres wrote: post #42

I'm probably being naive, but I feel surprised that in 2025, a platform like Steam (which has existed for well over 2 decades and has around 70M DAU) is having this type of issues. I don't want to downplay the complex engineering behind scale and massive surges of demand, but it's not like it's their first rodeo. What seems to be blocking users from getting the game is accepting payments, nothing computationally comp…

Payment systems turn out to be particularly thorny because they hit an intersection of technical issues with conflicting goals:

* You want them to be as fast as possible (ideally: instantaneous)

* You want them to be validated (long-poll to a third party validation service)

* You need them to be sequentially auditable (this is a "... or you could go to jail" requirement)

* If a failure occurs, you don't want to be out your own money

While these are solvable, it's the reason that so many cloud services suddenly hit scaling issues at the payments layer: things are going great and then that layer gets involved and "oops, hold on, we're waiting on Visa's servers. Still waiting. Stillllll waiiiiiting..........." Or the team was certain they'd simultaneously solved speed and sequential auditability this time but, oops, there's yet another sequencing point that's actually a bottleneck.

Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

#64

Post by shadowgovt »

bilekas wrote: post #52
egeres wrote: post #42

I'm probably being naive, but I feel surprised that in 2025, a platform like Steam (which has existed for well over 2 decades and has around 70M DAU) is having this type of issues. I don't want to downplay the complex engineering behind scale and massive surges of demand, but it's not like it's their first rodeo. What seems to be blocking users from getting the game is accepting payments, nothing computationally comp…

No system is completely redundant proof. It's just a matter of money and infrastructure. They didn't have any preorder system in place even so everyone had to search, buy and download all at the same time. It's probably close if not more than a million people waiting for a countdown to buy it. Bad planning, maybe but definitely not a conspiracy against the game.

In this specific instance, I am mildly surprised preorders weren't offered. That would have taken some load off their servers and granted them money sooner; win-win for them.

Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

#65

Post by MBCook »

iammjm wrote: post #39

Whats responsible for its secret? looks like an indie platformer game amongst many, many others. I think theres been about 20k games released on steam in 2024. How does it manage to stand out amongst other games?

Eurogamer just published an article on what was so impressive about the original:

https://www.eurogamer.net/whats-so-special-about-the-origina...

Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

#66

Post by shadowgovt »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #46
iammjm wrote: post #39

Whats responsible for its secret? looks like an indie platformer game amongst many, many others. I think theres been about 20k games released on steam in 2024. How does it manage to stand out amongst other games?

It's the sequel to an indie darling widely viewed as among the best (or the best) metroidvanias. On top of that, the game has been in development for 6+ years, so long that the release has become a meme. See r/SilkSong. The hype for this is remarkable and people have been counting the hours since it was announced 2 weeks ago. People trust Team Cherry to deliver a commensurate experience to Hollow Knight, which stands…

That development time window, and the fanbase salivating for a sequel, makes me smile.

Nintendo famously spends something like 6-8 years on its flagship titles (both Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Kart World are in that timeframe). Sometimes, depending on the team you're working with and the material you have, it turns out the secret to making a good game is... Time.

Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

#67

Post by jijikuya »

a_shovel wrote: post #4

Perhaps allowing preorders for a day or two might have helped spread the load? Or at least moved it earlier so that the checkout load didn't overlap with the load from users downloading.

1. That's Valve's prerogative, not the developer's. If they're not partnered with Valve they may not have had the option to enact pre-purchases. [1]

2. The game has no DRM and Steam preorders (in my experience) download the game files so people can play instantly on launch day. (They call it 'preloading'). For a game as highly anticipated as this, it'd likely just be cracked, leaked and pirated the moment preorders came live.

[1]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/prepurchase

Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

#68

Post by blobby14 »

iammjm wrote: post #39

Whats responsible for its secret? looks like an indie platformer game amongst many, many others. I think theres been about 20k games released on steam in 2024. How does it manage to stand out amongst other games?

For me, the original Hollow Knight wasn't exceptionally innovative or original, but did set an extremely high bar for polish and refinement over similar indie games. I've played a lot of metroid-style games and Hollow Knight has super tight movement, and expansive and thoughtfully interconnected map, simple but addictive combat, great art and design, memorable music, etc. Plenty of other games have some or most of those things, Hollow Knight just executes them at such a consistent level of craftsmanship that it stands out.

Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

#69

Post by shadowgovt »

12_throw_away wrote: post #3

I believe the Deltarune release this year also crashed a bunch of storefronts. Kind of interesting to compare the sales from these tiny indie developers vs, say, anything that Microsoft's mega game studios have touched in the last few years.

Games, as an industry, have a lot of overlap with film. One of those overlaps is that it's still an industry where one person, with the right idea and (depending on the idea) the willingness to invest the ungodly amount of time to see it through, can put something out there that competes with the big teams and big budgets.

Sometimes, the idea hits so hard that you don't even need the time investment. Notch got Minecraft from version alpha to version 1 in 2 years. That one was lightning in a bottle; unlikely to be reproducible consistently.

Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo

#70

Post by danaris »

nickthegreek wrote: post #16

Would you recommend playing the first before diving into this or is it safe to just pick this up and go?

In addition to what others have said, my understanding from Team Cherry's few reveals over the years since HK released is that Silksong takes place in a different location than Hallownest, the setting of Hollow Knight (though within the same world). Thus, given that most of the story of Hollow Knight is about Hallownest and what happened there, it is likely that you wouldn't miss much besides a few cool little connections by playing Silksong first.
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