Why Riot Canceled Hytale And How It Came Back To Life

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The adventure game Hytale, similar to Minecraft, is now available in early access, but its journey to release hasn’t been easy. Here’s a brief overview of its long development, initial cancellation, and eventual revival, leading up to its launch on January 13th.

Table of Contents [hide]

  • What is Hytale?
  • Why Riot canceled Hytale
  • Hytale returns
  • Riot celebrates Hytale’s early-access launch
  • Hytale is out now, and it’s only going to grow

What is Hytale?

Hytale is an adventure game that combines the open-ended creativity of a sandbox game with the engaging progression of a role-playing game. It takes place in a world created on the fly, filled with dungeons and various creatures. Visually, it’s similar to Minecraft with a distinct, stylized look.

The game became available in early access on January 13th, featuring essential gameplay elements like exploring, fighting, building, playing minigames, and joining player-hosted servers. More features will be added over time as the game develops.

Why Riot canceled Hytale

Hytale began development in 2015 by the team at Hypixel Games, a group of players originally known from the Hypixel Minecraft server. Riot Games provided funding and eventually acquired the studio. After ten years of work, however, Riot canceled Hytale in June 2025. The question is, what led to this decision?

As our ideas for the game developed and the gaming landscape changed, our goals became more ambitious, Hypixel explained in a blog post from June 2025 that has since been removed. Even after completely rebuilding the game’s engine, the team realized Hytale wasn’t progressing quickly enough.

Riot Games provided departing developers with both substantial severance packages and support to help them find new employment. Hypixel specifically commended Riot’s commitment to caring for its staff during this transition.

Hytale returns

Typically, when a game is cancelled and its development studio closes, the project is finished. However, that wasn’t what happened with Hytale and its creator, Hypixel.

As a huge fan, I was so relieved when Hypixel announced in November 2025 that Hytale was back on! They said seeing how upset everyone was when it was originally cancelled really made them step in. Even though they hadn’t worked on the game directly since 2020, they clearly still care a lot about Hytale and its community – and that’s awesome to see.

Hypixel partnered with Riot for Hytale before fully evaluating the game’s development, and they acknowledged the agreement carried significant risks. The specific details of the partnership haven’t been made public.

We finalized the agreement, brought back 30 developers, obtained the necessary funding, and decided to go back to using our original engine and the initial plan for the project, according to a developer involved.

Hypixel received funding from its co-founder, Simon Collins-Laflamme, and other original team members, who have committed funds for the next ten years. Importantly, this funding doesn’t come from any outside investors or publishers, Hypixel stated.

Riot celebrates Hytale’s early-access launch

On the day Hytale became available, Riot Games publicly congratulated the development team for finally launching the game after a challenging and lengthy process. Riot simply stated, “Congrats on early access!”

Congrats on early access 👊

— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 13, 2026

Hytale is out now, and it’s only going to grow

Hytale is now available in early access. You can purchase the Starter Edition for $20 to begin playing. Because it’s not available on Steam or other common platforms, players need to use the official Hytale Launcher to access the game.

This game is still in development, so players should anticipate some missing features and occasional bugs. The developer acknowledged that the game’s popularity has been higher than expected, meaning the initial launch period might have some issues, but they are working to ensure everyone can access it.

Hypixel only took over Hytale in November 2025, and since then, in just eight weeks, the team has made significant progress. They’ve been working with an older version of the game, combining a lot of different development efforts, and fixing essential elements like the camera, how players move, fighting, crafting, building, sound, and graphics. They’ve also eliminated thousands of bugs and added many new features.

With limited time available, Hypixel explained to players that the current version of Hytale is still quite raw and incomplete, but demonstrates what the game could become.

We’re really enjoying making the game, and we hope you have just as much fun playing it,” Hypixel said.

Hypixel has big plans for Hytale, with future updates adding a story-driven Adventure Mode, official minigames, and new ways to connect with other players.

Hypixel plans to release Hytale on consoles sometime in the future. They are also considering a mobile version. While they recognize Steam as a useful platform for marketing, they aren’t sure if they’ll ever need to launch the game there.

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2026-01-14 18:40