Steam down on Hollow Knight: Silksong release date as buyers struggle to purchase games

After six years of anticipation, Team Cherry’s new project is finally available. Unfortunately, the hype on the Hollow Knight: Silksong release date has crashed Valve’s Steam platform. As a result, many gamers are still waiting to see how the developer improved on its immensely popular Metroidvania game.

When Silksong became available at 10 AM EST/4 PM CST, reports of Steam being down flooded social media. The common error was E502 L3, which results from “overloaded or unstable Steam servers, typically caused by heavy traffic or server-side issues, rather than a problem with your local game or computer.” Downdetector also shows an immediate surge of errors precisely when the game launched.

Although frustrating, some buyers have been able to purchase and download the game by repeatedly refreshing the site. So far, Silksong has 110,000 concurrent players, but that’s far less than the expected peak some observers anticipate. In a busy period for releases, the chaos is also affecting the entire store. Customers are struggling to activate Steam keys for various other games.

The Silksong effect

Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo users are not immune to the fury caused by the Silksong release date. Marketplaces like the PlayStation Store and Nintendo eShop have also experienced connectivity issues. Still, Steam servers seem to be bearing the brunt of the server load.

While transactions are affected, the Steam forums remain up and running. That’s where fans are taking aim at Team Cherry for the lack of Silksong pre-orders. With the exception of the Xbox Store, there was also no way to pre-install the game.

The good news is that the file size for the download is only around 8 GB. When Steam is no longer down, it shouldn’t take long to start exploring the expanded Hollow Knight: Silksong world with Hornet.