Hollow Knight: Silksong causes server chaos on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by bspammer » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:15 PM UTC

smegger001 wrote: post #82

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…

What I don't understand is why Steam and others don't use a torrent-like protocol on their back-end to reduce their bandwidth requirements large numbers of customers downloading the game at the same time. Back in the day WOW used used it for distributing large patches it seems to be a solved problem.

Downloading the game wasn't a problem for anyone, as far as I know the CDN held up fine. The problem was the steam storefront, i.e. actually buying the game.

This makes sense because there are several live service games on steam that have hundreds of thousands of active players - any update will put a large instantaneous load on the CDN as all the clients are forced to update at the same time, and this happens extremely frequently so they've had to get good at handling it.

What doesn't happen very frequently is hundreds of thousands of people trying to buy a game at exactly the same time, because most games have pre-orders.

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

#122

Post by BobaFloutist » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:15 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #120

BobaFloutist wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that every platform, even the biggest, richest, and most "has their shit together" you can name, has had this problem at some point, points to it not actually being as solvable as you would expect.

Also considering how Steam gets hammered every big sale launch. Well I am not even sure that hurts their sales that much. So as long as your site continues to somewhat work and you recover in hours it is not in the end big deal. I think pay to view events might have hardest time as then there is actual need to be available at that exact time.

>I think pay to view events might have hardest time as then there is actual need to be available at that exact time.

True, though many of them have at least an hour or two of intro/opening ceremony/commentary to troubleshoot as people slowly join, so it's not the end of the world if the stream crashes up top.

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

#123

Post by HK-NC » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:23 PM UTC

kevinventullo wrote: post #95

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young there were two types of games I tended to enjoy: single-player games (e.g. Nethack, Half-life, Starcraft, & others with a good story and gameplay, or just deep gameplay) and LAN party games (e.g. Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, Total Annihilation, Quake II, and similar). LAN party games were more fun at LAN parties than online, and not just because server browsers all kind of sucked. Playing along…

FWIW there is a new-ish kind of intermediate genre between classic LAN/ranked multiplayer and single player, which is the whole “survival” genre. Generally speaking, they can be played as single player games, but also allow for small-scale co-op, synchronously or asynchronously. So even if you and a buddy have different schedules, you can make progress separately but still occasionally play together. Valheim, Grounde…

The tree punching genre hasn't satisfied either of those things for me.

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

#124

Post by arp242 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:24 PM UTC

Zren wrote: post #27

Figs wrote: post #22

Had no issues getting it on GOG: https://www.gog.com/en/game/hollow_knight_silksong

Wait the original was only $15?! I got Hollow Knight in a Humble Bundle so I had no idea how cheap that amazing game was. No wonder Silksong is only $20. I saw the memes about the devs asking for $20 and assumed it was $20 more like $60=>$80 or something like that.

It's just three blokes and a bunch of contractors. According to Wikipedia Hollow Knight sold more than 15 million copies, at $15 that's $225M. Of course you have store fees, and discounts, and taxes, and whatnot, but all of that accounted for they still made at least dozens of millions – if not more.

It's unclear if they would make more money if it was much more expensive. I picked it up for €19.50 today; not sure I would have paid €80.

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

#125

Post by OkayPhysicist » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:26 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #62

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 ou…

Credit card based payment systems really shouldn't suffer these kinds of problems: The entire reason why credit cards exist in the first place (compared to debit cards) is to enable distributed, asynchronous, eventually-consistent payments. It should be perfectly normal for a business like steam to simply store the details necessary to process payment and then eventually reconcile with them, at a pace that the processors can handle. Instead we've built a world that operates under physics-violating assumptions. Gah.

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

#126

Post by sorushn » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:32 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #74

thor-rodrigues wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly well-deserved. I have a similar list of _art_ instead of most _entertainment_, and Hollow Kight there together with Disco Elysium

[flagged]

> its fans told me that if I liked it and wasn't a Communist, I was missing the point that it was mocking me. As a communist who loves DE: The game mocks you even If you are any flavour of socialist/communist, and I don't think this is at odds with liking the game.

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

#127

Post by arp242 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:51 PM UTC

i_c_b wrote: post #23

A few years ago, I was feeling dispirited about being middle-aged and had come around to the conclusion that, at least when playing games, my general dissatisfaction and "meh" response to the games I was playing was probably a function of my age rather than anything about the games themselves. I was enjoying some games to an extent, but I wasn't being really grabbed by anything, and I was having a hard time sticking…

I've been keeping reviews in the last few years. Just privately, for myself. I started doing this because I couldn't remember what I did and didn't play, and had a "wait, I think I tried this before and didn't like it" deja-vu a few times.

Right now the rankings are: bad (388), meh (191), okay (71), good (63), superb (12). Turns out I dislike a lot of games. This is also why I started to just pirate things first and then buy if I like it; I have 558 games in my GOG library and I barely played (or like) >80% of it.

I can recommend keeping reviews by the way; I've since started doing this for tons of stuff, from games to films to TV episodes to wine to coffee, and writing things down really helps narrow down what you like or dislike about things. By keeping it private you can write whatever you like and don't need to do a "full" review. For example my entire review for Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound (rated "meh") is "Too fast-paced for my liking. Also don't really like the controls." And for me, that's enough.

I can write a long essay on why I like or dislike games, but to be honest I'd rather be playing Silksong.

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

#128

Post by arp242 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 11:01 PM UTC

Retr0id wrote: post #17

fwsgonzo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, when steam didn't work I got it immediately on GoG. Glad I did because it works flawlessly on Linux, and it comes with a Linux installer!

Is there an aarch64 linux build by any chance? (I've been playing the original via muvm/fex, which mostly works but crashes in menus frequently)

I don't know any commercial game that offers that. People playing games on arm64 Linux is a niche within a niche.

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

#129

Post by mvdtnz » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 11:14 PM UTC

kevinventullo wrote: post #95

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young there were two types of games I tended to enjoy: single-player games (e.g. Nethack, Half-life, Starcraft, & others with a good story and gameplay, or just deep gameplay) and LAN party games (e.g. Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, Total Annihilation, Quake II, and similar). LAN party games were more fun at LAN parties than online, and not just because server browsers all kind of sucked. Playing along…

FWIW there is a new-ish kind of intermediate genre between classic LAN/ranked multiplayer and single player, which is the whole “survival” genre. Generally speaking, they can be played as single player games, but also allow for small-scale co-op, synchronously or asynchronously. So even if you and a buddy have different schedules, you can make progress separately but still occasionally play together. Valheim, Grounde…

Nothing sucks the fun out of survival games like your friend who has way more time progressing the game far too much while you're absent.

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

#130

Post by semiquaver » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 11:32 PM UTC

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #83

NobodyNada wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 seems like a technically solvable problem: AES-encrypt the preload and distribute the key on launch day.

I thought they already did something like this. I recall some people complaining because the naive decryption process would double the required hard drive space while the bundle was unpacking on release day.

Of course they do. GGP has no idea what they are talking about.