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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

#151

Post by BlueTemplar »

orangeboats wrote: post #119
smegger001 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For any P2P protocols to work, including BitTorrent, you need to be able to access the other nodes. In today's world, that's becoming harder because everyone and their granny are gradually being hidden behind a strict CGNAT.

IPv6 ??

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

#152

Post by BlueTemplar »

bspammer wrote: post #121
smegger001 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 extrem…

Why then does Path of Exile (especially the new 2, which is only 1-2 steps in popularity below Silksong right now on SteamDB) bothers with still including a predownload torrent on every big update ?

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3829091

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

#153

Post by BlueTemplar »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #41
jsheard wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's mainly down to those mega-huge games usually having preorders, and small indie game usually not, for whatever reason. Neither Deltarune or Silksong could be preordered so everyone was zerg rushing the stores at the same time.

Especially with the ballooning size of installs, pre-ordering and pre-loading a 100GB+ game could be the difference between playing same day vs the next.

Note how Silksong is a decently small 7-8 Go.

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

#154

Post by crtasm »

rimunroe wrote: post #58
ahartmetz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure, really. Hollow Knight is a nice game, but it didn't blow me away. The atmosphere is very nice, but the main storyline is IMO overwrought and kind of random. The side stories and most characters are also nice. The mechanics are, I guess, above average as well.

I feel similarly. I appear to have put 30 hours into it at this point, but I don't have particularly strong memories of any part of it. It took me several tries to get into it initially. I've always felt like Ori and the Blind Forest (released only two years before Hollow Knight) was a much better game overall, particularly when it came to movement and story execution, yet it comes up far less often in discussions of…

Ori is a beautiful game but with so many effects and a tiny character I often found it hard to make out what was going on, the movement is very floaty which lead to combat feeling less tight, and other than a giant owl I don't remember any of the characters now. Hollow Knight's characters and world were a lot more memorable to me.

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

#155

Post by AngryData »

hinkley wrote: post #109
Figs wrote: post #22

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

Reminds me of how I found a switch light by thinking, “what’s the place that would have a Switch that would most surprise people they carried them?”

Back in the day I found an Xbox 360 2 days after release in a bombed out Circuit City.

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

#156

Post by orangeboats »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #151
orangeboats wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any P2P protocols to work, including BitTorrent, you need to be able to access the other nodes. In today's world, that's becoming harder because everyone and their granny are gradually being hidden behind a strict CGNAT.

IPv6 ??

That's the implicated solution to this problem, correct.

But you have a bunch of people on HN opposed to it for no good reason other than "IPv4 works for me™".

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

#157

Post by Arrowmaster »

DimmieMan wrote: post #135
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 believe there is a function of age to some degree, I 100% Assassins creed 2 at 14 and now I have a decade and a half of watching studios remake that goddamn game. They're all trying to make the best practice, safest game they can to reach the widest audience and end up bland with nothing new to offer those of us that have been playing a longer time. Almost all my favourite titles of the last decade have been smalle…

The thing that stuck with me after learning about it is that AAA games aren't called AAA because they are supposed to be the best of the best or the most advanced.

AAA games are named after AAA investment ratings. A AAA game is supposed to be the most profitable investment for the publisher paying the upfront investment. And the market has gotten saturated with enough customers that doing new things to get more customers is more risky than doing the same thing to keep your existing customers.

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

#158

Post by stoorafa »

arp242 wrote: post #124
Zren wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Definitely a unicorn success story. I’d be curious about Balatro in a similar vein—-labor of love turns wildly successful

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

#159

Post by thunderfork »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #125
shadowgovt wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proces…

[dead]

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

#160

Post by thunderfork »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #152
bspammer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 extrem…

Why then does Path of Exile (especially the new 2, which is only 1-2 steps in popularity below Silksong right now on SteamDB) bothers with still including a predownload torrent on every big update ? https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3829091

The PoE torrent is for their own distribution of their game (as opposed to Steam/Epic, with which the torrent can't be used) - I imagine Grinding Gear's own distribution stack is not as robust as the big ol' platforms.
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