Final week Steam and different main storefronts crashed, studies the Guardian, together with Nintendo’s eShop, PlayStation Retailer and Microsoft Retailer. They have been all “unable to deal with the demand for Hole Knight: Silksong, the long-awaited sequel to the critically acclaimed 2017 indie hit Hole Knight.” (which had bought 15 million copies):
SilkSong’s launch triggered widespread outages, with 1000’s of customers reporting points making an attempt to purchase the sport within the first few hours of its launch. Many have been unable to finish purchases, with error messages persisting for nearly three hours after the launch… Regardless of the technical hiccups, inside half-hour of going dwell Steam reported greater than 100,000 energetic gamers, suggesting many had managed to safe their copies.
Aftermath says the “bug-tastic” phenomenon displaced every part besides Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 on Steam’s listing of most-played video games. The Guardian notes that “Not less than seven different new video games have delayed their launch up to now two weeks to keep away from a conflict…”
“Folks have been spamming the chat and the feedback of each single sport showcase or information occasion with the phrases ‘The place’s Silksong?’ for years,” writes the Guardian’s video video games editor:
I’ve by no means seen one other indie sport obtain this degree of notoriety earlier than it was even launched… As VGC factors out, Atari launched an analogous sport on the identical day as Silksong (Journey of Samsara) and it had solely 12 concurrent gamers on Steam. They add that “the hype is justified”. Eurogame known as Silksong “stunning, thrilling and merciless.” PC Sport mentioned Silksong “glows with a degree of precision and creativeness that is onerous to search out anyplace else” and “will beat you, burn you, rub your face within the dust, after which dazzle you with one other piece of a haunted clockwork world.”
However no less than among the demand additionally got here from the sport’s low value of $20 within the U.S., suggests Slashdot reader UnknowingFool (with variable regional pricing). “At 5.2M needs, it was essentially the most want listed sport on Steam. In Brazil, the native value was 74.95 Brazil Actual or 13.94 USD.”
Within the age of $70+ AAA video games with extra prices, not everybody celebrated the patron pleasant value. Some unbiased sport builders have expressed concern that their video games could not promote as effectively in comparison with Silksong and can’t afford to cost much less. From ScreenRant:
Hole Knight: Silksong’s unbelievably low value level of simply $19.99 is exceptionally good worth for the patron. It’s an extremely prolonged sport that’s solely marginally dearer than its predecessor… it’s proving to be a supply of controversy for different indie builders who imagine it’ll distort gamers’ expectations.