Silksong crashes Steam, Nintendo eShop on release day — highly anticipated indie video game took six years to arrive and is already one of the most played games ever on Steam

The biggest video game of the year, if not the decade, has arrived on the scene in a major way. Hollow Knight: Silksong, widely considered to be the most anticipated indie video game release of all time, crashed digital storefronts like Steam and the Nintendo eShop on release yesterday, immediately hitting the Steam Charts with the third most concurrent players in the world as a paid, single-player platformer.

Silksong, the sequel to 2017's Hollow Knight, is currently the #3 most-played game on Steam before the West Coast even wakes up. Its peak of 535,213 players, achieved 3 hours after release, is enough to make it the 18th highest all-time peak on Steam, ahead of game franchises like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Fallout. This is made more impressive by the fact that Silksong is an independent release from the three-person development squad Team Cherry, and is a Metroidvania-style platformer.

To get over 500,000 concurrent players, Silksong first needed to be bought by at least 500,000 gamers. This was a challenge for many as Steam, Nintendo eShop, and the PS5 Store all reported widespread outages immediately following Silksong's release at 7:00 am Pacific Daylight Time yesterday. Of course, the 500,000 player count only includes online Steam users, with the Day one player/sales numbers from other platforms still unknown; careful estimates place Silksong well north of 1,000,000 players on its first day.

Silksong has become something of an internet joke in the six years since it was first announced as a DLC to Hollow Knight. The three-man development squad behind the title was extremely secretive about development progress, offering no release date until earlier this year. The game became the most wishlisted title on Steam even as the release was wholly uncertain.

Silksong hopefuls and Hollow Knight fans became somewhat assured that the game would never release, until a May Nintendo livestream revealed a few extra gameplay clips that sparked hope the game would release soon. Yesterday's release date was surprise-announced two weeks ago, causing an indie games wave that led dozens of other indie games to delay their own releases to avoid becoming completely overlooked by Silksong's massive hype.

The hype and goodwill around the game's eventual release are also unprecedented in a modern cynical internet. Users of Reddit's r/Piracy forum, one of the foremost hubs for discussing pirating video games and other media, began encouraging each other to purchase the game rather than pirate it, pointing to its cheap $20 price tag and a desire to support the small dev team.

Silksong's release is the first time I've seen comments on the Piracy subreddit push for people to buy it instead.

Silksong's crashing of games storefronts and incredibly high player totals are a good sign that the title will become one of the great indie games success stories. Game of the Year nominations and sales records are almost a foregone conclusion, with the $20 price tag becoming a rallying cry for fans against the perceived greed behind the $80 video game price tag now pushed by some AAA studios. What happens next for Silksong's release and its legacy is yet unknown, though we wouldn't be surprised to see it continue to climb higher up the record books.

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