Hollow Knight Silksong Launch Just Gave Us a Preview of How Crazy Grand Theft Auto 6's Release Could Be

On September 4, 2025, Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s highly anticipated release caused an unprecedented outage on major gaming platforms like Steam due to the influx of players, which might be just a glimpse of what’s coming when Grand Theft Auto 6 launches. The fact that Hollow Knight: Silksong could cause such a stir in the industry is impressive, especially for a $20 indie game. Still, its scale in terms of budget and development team is nowhere near what Rockstar is putting into Grand Theft Auto 6, the sequel to a game that broke six world sales records on its launch day.

Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s success was inevitable, as it was already wishlisted by over five million users on Steam alone. Other publishers were well aware of its influence, which is why so many games delayed their release to avoid launching on the same day. But few expected this small indie game to cause an industry-wide blackout, getting some people to think about how much bigger releases like GTA 6 might shake up the industry.

Hollow Knight: Silksong’s Launch Signals a ‘GTA 6 Incident’

In what fans are now calling the “Silksong Incident,” Steam faced an almost two-hour outage on September 4, with over 70,000 users reporting issues on Downdetector, a server downtime tracker. The interruption lined up with Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s release time at 7 AM PT, suggesting that Team Cherry’s Metroidvania was so popular it brought down Steam’s servers. Valve’s storefront wasn’t the only one affected, as reports indicate Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo’s online stores also experienced partial service interruption and technical problems around the same time. This raises the question of how these platforms will handle one of the biggest launches in gaming history on May 26, 2026, when Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives.

To illustrate how Silksong‘s release can serve as a preview of GTA 6‘s, fans should note that Team Cherry’s game had around 530,000 concurrent Steam players at launch, an incredible achievement for a title of this scale. By comparison, GTA 6 is expected to far surpass these numbers, as its predecessor sold over 11 million copies on launch day alone. GTA 5′s record-breaking success, which includes six Guinness World Records and the title of fastest entertainment property to reach $1 billion, highlights the franchise’s immense reach. Given that a game the size of Silksong can cause outages across major platforms, Rockstar’s highly anticipated open-world game, which some industry veterans are calling the first “AAAAA” title, could create an even more massive impact.

Hollow Knight: Silksong Release Has Delayed Another Game

One of Steam’s biggest outages happened on August 24, 2024, during the launch of Black Myth: Wukong. That day, an organized DDoS attack caused technical issues for millions of PC users, though Valve quickly responded and shut it down. Now, some industry analysts believe the release of GTA 6 could trigger an even larger service interruption unless gaming platforms and storefronts prepare ahead of time.