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

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101–110 of 164 posts

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

#101
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.

They actually have implemented this in a very limited context. You can download games from other machines on your local network.

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the game and genre is the exploration. A guide kinda defeats that. If you don't like the backtracking (I hated it), then the game is probably not for you.

What a weird comment. The whole point of any game is to have fun. If someone enjoys playing a game with a guide, what's the problem exactly ?

How do you know if you enjoy playing the game without a guide if you don't do it? Looking something up to unstuck yourself is one thing, but following a guide from beginning to end is robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the game as presented.

"beating the game as quickly as possible" is such an obviously flawed reason to use a guide that I won't even respond to it. If you don't have the time to play the game, don't.

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

#103

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 Minecr…

Is that still true for film? The distribution channels for that industry are so tightly controlled that indie film producers don't see nearly the same levels of success as video games. There's a good handful of new indie game millionaires every year, and I don't think that the same can be said for TV or film.

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

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Nintendo famously spends something like 6-8 years on its flagship titles

This is not something Nintendo is famous for. This is just the norm in modern day game development now. It took 3 years for Mario Galaxy to get a sequel back on the Wii.

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

#105
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's necessary. Hollow Knight is a game whose appeal comes from exploring a massive, beautiful world and and discovering its secrets -- using a guide would take away a lot of the fun, at least for me. Yeah, HK is a huge game and Silksong is probably bigger; it'll take a while to play through both. But that's a good thing. Play these games for the experience of playing them, no need to rush through the…

Lots of us have work and families and don’t have time to organically figure out the insane steps to go down some of the late stage paths.

And for the same reason, you don't _have_ to do Path of Pain, or Pantheon.

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

#106
post #17

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)

The system requirements list an x86-64 processor, so probably not.

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

#107

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

Hollow Knight is a classic. If you enjoy Metroidvania style games you’ll love (almost) every minute. The music and sound effects are great too, so it’s worth playing with headphones if your gaming setup is in an environment with heavy background noise.

That being said, from what I’ve played of Silksong so far, it doesn’t seem to be crafted such that you’ll get the most out of the gameplay only if you played HK. Full appreciation of the in-game lore you’ll discover in Silksong is probably another matter, but even then I think playing them in either order will be a good time. Enjoy!

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

#108

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…

Funny, I'm the opposite; I love Hollow Knight, but I didn't like Ori at all. I think it's because of the visual design; I couldn't tell if that glowing orb is an enemy, a bullet, or a pickup.

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

#109
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?”

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

#110
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…

Same here. Hollow Knight and Elden Ring are the only two games in the last decade that I've put more than a few hours into. E.g I used to love Civilization, but none of them since 4 have done it for me. Same with Simcity2000. I'll play Madden or Fortnite with my kids, but I'm done mentally after 20 minutes.

The last game I liked like these was Morrowind back in 2004 or so. One of the great things about being a parent is sharing these kinds of things with your kids. I've already got Silksong downloaded on our Switch and XBox to play together when they get home from school in ~1 hr.

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