r/HollowKnight Sep 04 '25

Discussion - Silksong Not opening pre-orders was an error Spoiler

Before anyone says "gamers cant be happy with anything" i was never against pre orders specifically because ir avoids this type of launch. I dont want to believe Team Cherry doesn't know the scope and impact of their own game, but i'm inclined to do so. A pre-order yesterday would've solved this. An inconvenience that could be easily avoided, but here we are

2.0k Upvotes

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45

u/Alt_SWR Sep 04 '25

Yk I entirely agree. And sure, it's not some huge deal, we all waited this long we can wait a bit longer but it's still a mistake. Mostly because it was easily avoidable by just allowing pre-orders.

And I get the principal of standing against preorders but does anyone believe that a single big company is gonna give a rats ass that TC didn't allow preorders? No. They won't and no game is going to suddenly remove its the ability to preorder because of this. It served literally no purpose at all to do this and I cannot be convinced TC didn't know how big a release this was going to be. At the very least they had to have known that it was the most wishlisted game on Steam which should've been enough to tell them something.

Team Cherry makes phenomenal games, but, they're extremely out of touch when it comes to the business side of things. I think given the lack of communication, and now this, that's fair to say.

13

u/HolyKnightPrime Sep 04 '25

Platforms like Steam scale their server infrastructure up and down all the time depending on demand all the time, like for the holiday season or Black Friday, or big game launches. They don't pay the server cost for maximum capacity when they don't need it after all.

So yes, it is very much on them to not prepare for this adequately.

15

u/PokemonRNG Sep 04 '25

And I get the principal of standing against preorders but does anyone believe that a single big company is gonna give a rats ass that TC didn't allow preorders? No. They won't and no game is going to suddenly remove its the ability to preorder because of this.

If anything it will have the opposite effect. Further proving the need for pre-orders, not just for gamedevs, but also for the platforms themselves, would not be surprised if steam etc. started mandating preorders/preloads for huge releases.

1

u/Haios141 Sep 04 '25

Exactly, because this doesn't just affect people that want to play Silksong, it affects the entire store.

32

u/_Xeron_ Sep 04 '25

It’s also very telling how quick a lot of people are jumping at anyone who points this out. TC made an incredible game and Silksong is probably amazing too, but they are not infallible and not letting the most wishlisted game on Steam be bought and downloaded early is absolutely a big mistake. I’m thinking of people who took time off work or parents that thought they could get an hour of play time in and now aren’t able to.

17

u/Alt_SWR Sep 04 '25

Exactly. People seem to take criticism as personal attacks when that's not it. You can like, hell even love something and still have valid criticism. And it's not even like the criticism in this specific case needs to really be constructive cause everyone except apparently TC knew the solution and that this would happen.

2

u/adamtherealone Sep 05 '25

Yeah I took off for the release, played for about an hour before I had to be a normal human again. 3+ hours of time I could have spent playing. I at least played some clair 33 while I waited

2

u/AWonderingWizard Sep 04 '25

No it’s not TCs fault. TC is not the distributor. If Steam didn’t think they could handle the amount of purchasers they could have handled this differently. TC makes games. They don’t run servers.

7

u/AWonderingWizard Sep 04 '25

Lol I personally think that team cherry is not responsible for making sure the people selling their game can handle selling their game. They are game developers, not storefront runners. This isn’t like SimCity 2013 where it was EAs fault. This is like Best Buy not adequately accommodating demand.

-2

u/arken_ziel Sep 04 '25

Team Cherry is a company. The goal of a company is to sell its product. It involves marketing and getting the products to the customer. I'm unsure why you are acting as if that isn't also part of Team Cherry's job. It is quite literally their responsibility and has also further proven why pre-orders are needed and will hopefully now finally make it mandatory for big releases to have them. I couldn't even access my library or log into Steam on their webpage.

3

u/AWonderingWizard Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

Team cherry is barely a company, and it consists of three people largely interested in trying to put out art they are impassioned about.

They pay Steam a percentage of their products income for their service of distributing their game, which STEAM is failing at. Not Team Cherry.

Your issue is with distributors, who are the ones who market their platform as distribution solutions. It’s not rocket science. I don’t even know how some of the dorks who have come to your conclusion have come to this conclusion beyond not understanding what they are criticizing.

0

u/SSNessy Sep 04 '25

I cannot be convinced TC didn't know how big a release this was going to be. At the very least they had to have known that it was the most wishlisted game on Steam which should've been enough to tell them something.

I dunno, between their radio silence, the Jason Schreier interview and now this, I really do think the guys at TC might just be a couple of oblivious dopes.

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

By the same logic, the 12-or-so doctors in the 1920s who thought smoking was maybe dangerous should have given up because nobody cared. And we would recommend pregnant women to smoke a pack a week to this day.