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Title: Hollow Knight Sequel 'Silksong' Crashed Game Stores, as $20 Price Irks
Competitors

Link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/09/13/221...

Last week Steam and other major storefronts crashed, reports the Guardian,
including Nintendo's eShop, PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store. They were
all "unable to cope with the demand for Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-
awaited sequel to the critically acclaimed 2017 indie hit Hollow Knight."
(which had sold 15 million copies): SilkSong's release triggered widespread
outages, with thousands of users reporting issues trying to buy the game in
the first few hours of its release. Many were unable to complete purchases,
with error messages persisting for almost three hours after the launch...
Despite the technical hiccups, within 30 minutes of going live Steam reported
more than 100,000 active players, suggesting many had managed to secure their
copies. Aftermath says the "bug-tastic" phenomenon displaced everything
except Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 on Steam's list of most-played games. The
Guardian notes that "At least seven other new games have delayed their launch
in the past two weeks to avoid a clash..." "People have been spamming the
chat and the comments of every single game showcase or news event with the
words 'Where's Silksong?' for years," writes the Guardian's video games
editor: I've never seen another indie game achieve this level of notoriety
before it was even released... As VGC points out, Atari released a similar
game on the same day as Silksong (Adventure of Samsara) and it had only 12
concurrent players on Steam. They add that "the hype is justified". Eurogame
called Silksong "beautiful, thrilling and cruel." PC Game said Silksong
"glows with a level of precision and imagination that's hard to find anywhere
else" and "will beat you, burn you, rub your face in the dirt, and then
dazzle you with another piece of a haunted clockwork world." But at least
some of the demand also came from the game's low price of $20 in the U.S.,
suggests Slashdot reader UnknowingFool (with variable regional pricing). "At
5.2M wishes, it was the most wish listed game on Steam. In Brazil, the local
price was 74.95 Brazil Real or 13.94 USD." In the age of $70+ AAA games with
additional costs, not everyone celebrated the consumer friendly price. Some
independent game developers have expressed concern that their games may not
sell as well compared to Silksong and cannot afford to charge less. From
ScreenRant: Hollow Knight: Silksong's unbelievably low price point of just
$19.99 is exceptionally good value for the consumer. It is an incredibly
lengthy game that is only marginally more expensive than its predecessor...
it is proving to be a source of controversy for other indie developers who
believe it will distort players' expectations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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