After eight long years, Hollow Knight: Silksong has finally arrived. There’s just one small problem: the biggest game release of 2025 is causing all sorts of issues for the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop and Steam store pages. Fans racing to download the highly-anticipated Metroidvania sequel are stuck looking at error screens instead.
Xbox stores are getting hammered too. Here’s what players are seeing:
I’ve been trying to download the game on my Switch 2 and I keep getting kicked out of the eShop. On my most recent attempt I was finally able to load the actual Silksong store listing and hear the music from the auto-playing trailer, but nothing else on the page actually populated. After about 20 seconds the store crashed on me again and kicked me back out to the main Switch 2 menu.
There’s no word yet on whether this is just a momentary issue caused by the sudden surge in traffic or if something else is going on with Silksong‘s launch that could delay it further from its originally planned 10:00 a.m. ET debut. Some players do appear to be having success getting the game downloaded, at least on Steam. It’s also available through Game Pass for free for paying members.
silksong has crashed the entirety of steam and most twitch streamers are having a bad time pic.twitter.com/IqKxctPA1G
— Hayden Schiff (ᵔᴥᵔ) (@HaydenSchiff) September 4, 2025
The game’s arrival has been unique among modern releases, with no advanced code provided to reviewers and everyone getting the chance to jump into the game and play it at the same time. Or at least whenever the eShop, Steam, and other store pages start working again!
Update 9/4/2025 10:38 a.m. ET: More and more people are reporting being able to get through the error cycle on their platform of choice and actually download Silksong. According to SteamDB, over 100,000 people are already playing through Valve’s storefront, though I suspect that number is lagging way behind the actual figures.
Can it hit 1 million by lunchtime? The all-time peaks are currently held by PUBG (3,257,248 concurrents) and Black Myth: Wukong (2,415,714 concurrents).
Update 9/4/2025 11:39 a.m. ET: Things got so bad on Switch that Nintendo had take the eShop down for maintenance.
Nintendo Network Maintenance Information:
Nintendo eShop
The network service is unavailable at this time.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.https://t.co/knw963IcqT https://t.co/2Lk4lgzRnw pic.twitter.com/g0mP2C0pgg— Wario64 (@Wario64) September 4, 2025
The downtime didn’t last too long and I’ve since been able to buy Silksong on Switch 1 (the Switch 2 upgrade is free and not backwards compatible).
Update 9/4/2025 12:03 p.m. ET: Unlike the other platforms, Silksong wasn’t available on PS5 right at 10:00 a.m.
Ps5 users now #Silksong #ps5 #silksong2025 pic.twitter.com/RMvviYxVed
— kc_genesis (@ali_boutaib) September 4, 2025
Fans have had to seemingly wait hours until the regular time the store updates to get access. As of noon today it’s still not accessible on PlayStation.
Update 9/4/2025 1:14 p.m. ET: Silksong is now live on PS5. It only took about two and a half hours extra.
