Hollow Knight: Silksong crashes Steam and eShops in its long-awaited 2025 launch

The release of Hollow Knight: Silksong on September 4, 2025, caused an impact that overwhelmed several online platforms. Steam, Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store, and Microsoft Store experienced crashes and errors due to the massive number of players trying to purchase the game at the same time.

A launch with technical issues

As soon as the game was available, thousands of users reported errors when trying to buy or download it. On Steam, messages such as “Something went wrong” and error E502 L3 appeared, preventing purchases. On Nintendo eShop and PlayStation Store, players experienced long loading times and, in some cases, the game temporarily disappeared from the stores.

The tracking site Downdetector showed a peak of more than 3,700 failure reports right after launch. Even Humble Bundle briefly marked the title as “unavailable due to excessive traffic.”

Immediate success despite the issues

Despite these problems, the game reached remarkable figures in its first hours. In less than 30 minutes, more than 100,000 people were playing on Steam, and within hours the number rose to over 500,000 concurrent players, placing it among the most played on the platform.

On social media, many users shared screenshots of the errors, some with frustration and others with humor. They also pointed out that the lack of pre-orders or preloads was one of the main reasons behind the crash.

Reasons behind the overload

The phenomenon can be explained by several combined factors:

• A wait of seven years since the first Hollow Knight in 2017.
• More than 4.8 million users had it on their Steam wishlist.
• Its affordable price, lower than many major titles.
• Its availability from day one on Xbox Game Pass.
• A global simultaneous launch across all platforms.

Demand was also reflected on Twitch, where more than 300,000 people watched live streams of the game during release.

Impact on the industry

The launch of Silksong not only affected digital stores. Several indie studios postponed their own releases to avoid clashing with the game’s debut. September 2025 thus recorded one of the months with the fewest Steam releases since 2020.

The title quickly became number one in global Steam sales and also topped the Nintendo eShop, confirming its massive reach from day one.