Steam was down — 'Hollow Knight: Silksong' launch caused major headaches

Down due to a major release

Steam began struggling to load this morning as the platform was overloaded by players downloading Hollow Knight: Silksong ahead of the game being playable at 10am ET, 7am PT and 3pm BST. Users who tried to login for the launch were met with error messages that read “Something Went Wrong” or noticed that the Steam client was loading extremely slowly or not at all.

Fortunately, it appears that some people are now able to access Steam and I am now able to load the store page in my browser. Given that today will be a very busy day for the platform though, it could go down again.

Up and running (for now)

Following the initial reports that Steam was down for many, I just went to the website and confirmed that the store is back up. In fact, as I'm using a new PC, I went ahead and downloaded the Steam client and logged into my account. However, while the store is up on the web, signing into my account is taking a lot longer than usual, likely due to the influx of users trying to download and play Hollow Knight: Silksong.

Slow but operational

Steam is currently up and running with almost 36 million active users logged into the platform. According to SteamDB, everything seems to be almost back to normal except for the store itself which was loading quite slowly for many users. Given that most people are at work, I wonder if we could see another outage or major slowdown this evening once people get home and start playing Hollow Knight: Silksong on the platform.

Reports are tapering down

Over on Down Detector, we're currently seeing fewer outage reports as it appears the PC gaming platform has recovered from the massive spike in traffic it saw in the run up to Hollow Knight: Silksong's release. I'm now able to open the store and browse like I normally would, so the worst could definitely be behind us.

You won't find any Hollow Knight: Silksong reviews just yet

If you're on the fence about picking up Hollow Knight: Silksong on release day, you might be looking for reviews of the highly anticipated game. However, there aren't any at the moment as review codes didn't go out to Tom's Guide and other outlets before the games release. There are plenty of hands-on accounts from those who played the game early to check out in the meantime. Just keep in mind that people who played Hollow Knight: Silksong before release had limited time to do so and likely barely scratched the surface of what appears to be a 50+ hour game.

Not just Steam

Given that Hollow Knight: Silksong isn't a PC exclusive, many fans of the series also took to the Nintendo eShop to download and play the new release today, likely on the new Switch 2. This led to Nintendo's online store also experiencing issues at around the same time Steam did.

Like the PC gaming platform, the eShop does appear to be back up, so you can download Silksong there if you want to play the game on the go if you don't have a Steam Deck

Off to a great start

Right now, over 100,000 people are currently playing Hollow Knight: Silksong on Steam according to SteamDB. This is a fantastic start for the highly anticipated sequel to 2017's hit Metroidvania. We'll likely get a better look at the game's sales across other platforms in a few days. And just a reminder, if you're having trouble buying the game on Steam or on the Nintendo eShop, it's also available on PlayStation (both PS4 and PS5) and Xbox too.

PlayStation and Xbox also experiencing issues

In addition to Steam and the Nintendo eShop, it appears that the release of Hollow Knight is also affecting Sony and Microsoft's respective game stores. I've seen several reports on X (like this one from Dexerto) that users on PS5 and Xbox are no longer able to load the game's store page on both platforms. Like with Steam though, this issue should be resolved once the initial surge of people trying to buy and download the game on launch day winds down.

Spike in Steam outage reports

Just when it looked like Steam was set to fully recover, over on Down Detector, there's been a slight spike in new outage reports. I expected that Steam wouldn't instantly recover and that the platform and its store would continue experiencing issues throughout the day.

Over on X, many users are posting that while they can open and use Steam, they aren't able to actually buy Hollow Knight: Silksong after adding the game to their carts. If you do want to play Silksong on PC, there are other options though, you can get it through Humble Bundle or on the Xbox PC game store. Likewise, if you're a Game Pass subscriber, it's available now as a day one release.

No official response yet

I've scoured through the various social accounts from Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Team Cherry and no one has acknowledged the slowdown yet.

To be fair to Team Cherry, they likely can't do anything about any Steam issues, and the team is based out of Australia where it's currently 2:30 in the morning.

But both the Steam and Team Cherry accounts have a lot of comments with people sad about the inability to download the game.

Reports going down again

Nearly an hour ago there was a big spike in reports after it seemed like it was tapering off.

That second spikes appears to be going down now as more people are reporting they can download Silksong.

As of this writing, Down Detector is showing around 2,700 reports, a significant drop from the initial major spike of 11,000 and the follow up one that hit around 6,500.

Outage nearly over

Following our last post, the Steam outage has halved again to around 1,200 reports.

I am still seeing comments that some people are having trouble once they get to entering payment information.

However, more people are indicating that they've been able to get through and download the game.

I'll keep an eye on things a little bit longer to see if anything changes, but if you were waiting until the outage subsided, you should be okay to jump in.

Calling it

Well, friends, our time here is done, for now.

Reports have finally dipped under 1,000 over on Down Detector. And looking at the official Steam Network page and the unofficial Steamstat.us shows everything to be back to normal.

Hollow Knight: Silksong may have been the cause but it appears things have settled down and you can get back to gaming away.