Endlessly delayed, once-canceled, and Minecraft-adjacent, Hytale is getting one more life.
Riot Games has officially sold the project back to its original founders, Simon Collins-Laflamme and Philippe Touchette. It’s a full-circle pivot after Riot aquired Hypixel Studios in 2020 only to wind it down earlier this year. Whether that means the game will finally be released remains to be seen.
A Passion Project Pulled Out of a Corporate Sinkhole
Collins-Laflamme announced the reacquisition on Twitter with the kind of triumphant understatement only someone who’s spent years watching their dream stall could muster: “We did it. Hytale is saved.”
The founders now own 100% of the game with no outside investors, and they’re personally committing to funding it for the next ten years.
More than 30 former developers have already been rehired, with more expected to return. Hypixel Studios, once folded into Riot’s machinery, is effectively reassembling itself from the pieces left behind.
The Return to the “Original Vision”
To move faster, the team is returning to Hytale’s older “Legacy” tech. It’s not glamorous, and they’re the first to say so.
“This is not a polished AAA release waiting in the wings,” Collins-Laflamme wrote. “It’s messy. It’s janky.”
The point is not perfection; it’s momentum. Early access will arrive “as soon as possible,” rough edges included.
At launch, players will get exploration mode, creative mode, and full mod support. Adventure mode and minigames, once positioned as flagship features, will land later.
Riot’s Role in the Resurrection
Riot Games, after evaluating multiple offers, said returning Hytale to its founders gave the community “its best shot” at actually playing the game. It’s an unusually tidy exit for a project that had turned into a long-running liability (and a rare moment where a major studio hands the keys back rather than leaving a half-finished game in a corporate vault).
Early Access: Come for the Magic, Stay for the Jank
The revived team is blunt about what players should expect: bugs, broken systems, placeholder content, and the general chaos of a project rebooting itself mid-run.
But they’re equally confident that the heart of the game—its worldbuilding, its moddability, its sense of possibility—still works.
“This is not going to be easy. This is not going to be fast. This is not going to be perfect,” the blog post reads. It’s too early to tell, but it does look like it has a fighting chance. Stripped down, independently held, and finally back in the hands of the people who wanted to build it in the first place, Hytale is saved.