Silksong launch breaks the internet as it disappears from PS5 store

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Silksong protagonist Hornet looking upwards in a grassy area next to a broken cage — No, you didn’t misread that, Hornet (Team Cherry)

Hollow Knight: Silksong has been completely removed from the PlayStation Store as consoles and PC struggle with the launch.

If you’re reading this, that means you’re not playing Hollow Knight: Silksong at the moment, which may leave you in a minority amongst gamers. Yes, after years of studio silence, memes, and copium amongst fans, the indie game equivalent of GTA 6 is finally available for purchase.

It went live earlier this afternoon and, to the surprise of no one, completely broke every storefront it’s available on. And since Team Cherry didn’t offer any sort of pre-load option, that meant many people were unable to buy or download it.

All the stores, including Steam, were down at 3pm, when the game launched in the UK, but at time of writing it’s still impossible to buy the game on PlayStation 5.

At the time of writing, these storefront issues seem to have been sorted out. We can access Steam, the Nintendo eShop, and the Xbox store just fine… but it seems PlayStation owners are still out of luck.

The PlayStation Store itself seems to be working fine but Silksong is nowhere to be found. We tried searching for it on the PlayStation 5 console itself and the store’s website, but there’s not even a listing for it anymore.

The game’s not on the PlayStation store’s front page nor is there any mention of it on Sony’s social media accounts. Some of that may be to do with whatever marketing deal Team Cherry has with Xbox (with Silksong on Game Pass and being used to promote the ROG Xbox Ally) but it’s still strange to see such a massive game be ignored by Sony.

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Perhaps Sony temporarily removed the game because the store kept crashing from the amount of people trying to buy it, but you’d think Sony would actually explain that on its support page or something.

Mind you, the PlayStation Store, especially the European, is often slow to update with new releases and generally seems poorly maintained. So, it’s possible Sony is withholding Silksong’s release until later in the day, even though Team Cherry advertised the game as launch everywhere at 3pm BST on the dot.

With any luck, it’ll be fixed by the time you read this but regardless, Silksong is off to a strong start on Steam, with over 100,000 players in its first hour, according to SteamDB.

It’s also proving a poignant moment for certain fans, as this means an end to the long running gag about Silksong’s absence. The Is Silksong Out Yet? X account has posted a blunt ‘Yes,’ which likely means no more daily updates after more than five years.

Similarly, a YouTube channel called Daily Silksong News, which had been posting short Silksong related videos since January 2021, uploaded a 10-minute video titled ‘The End’ featuring a full stop-motion animation and a face reveal of the channel’s host, Araraura.

Speaking with Eurogamer, Araraura calls the whole thing ‘surreal,’ saying, ‘I got so used to Silksong just being ‘a game that’s not out’ now that it’s about to be it almost feels like I’m about to experience something that was out of my reach for so long.’