Hollow Knight: Silksong is finally here, and its crashing Nintendo and Steam

One of the most hyped video games in years finally came out on Thursday morning, and the most popular digital storefronts couldn't handle it at all.

I'm talking, of course, about Hollow Knight: Silksong.

The highly anticipated sequel to 2017's Hollow Knight officially launched at 10 a.m. ET on Thursday, following several years of radio silence and an exciting re-emergence just a couple of weeks ago. Multiple other indie games had to move their release dates so they wouldn't compete directly with Silksong. It's a big deal.

Unfortunately, as my social feed shows, gamers are having a real hard time actually buying it.

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Many of my friends on Bluesky posted screenshots of the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop crashing when trying to purchase Silksong. Steam and the PlayStation Store have also reportedly experienced issues, per Kotaku. Nintendo actually had to bring down the eShop temporarily for maintenance, which is not something you normally see related to any individual game, much less an indie side-scroller that costs $20.

Of course, that low price point, combined with years of endearing community love for the original game, can help explain why this launch is such a burden on digital storefronts. It should also be noted that pre-ordering and preloading the game were not possible on any platform, which is not normally how game launches work. At the time of writing, it sounds like people are finally able to download and play Silksong, though I still received a 503 error when I tried to access the Nintendo online store. (Steam seems to be working fine.)

What are you waiting for? Go out there and check it out, if you're so inclined.