From dream Minecraft rival to total shutdown
Hytale has had one of the wildest journeys in recent PC gaming. When it was first announced in 2018, it looked like the perfect mix of Minecraft style sandbox building and a full blown RPG. The early trailers had players convinced it was about to step in and compete with Mojang in a big way.
Riot Games clearly agreed. In 2020, Riot bought Hypixel Studios, the team behind Hytale, and expectations shot through the roof. This was no longer just a cool indie project. It became a big studio backed attempt at a new generation of blocky sandbox adventures.
Then everything fell apart.
Over the years Hytale ran into huge development problems. Scope creep set in. The team tried to rebuild the game on a new engine. According to Hypixel co founder Simon Collins Laflamme, their technical ambitions just kept getting more complex. Even after a major reboot of the tech, the team still felt Hytale was not where it needed to be.
After more than seven years in development with very little to show publicly, Riot finally pulled the plug. It cancelled Hytale entirely and shut down the studio. For most games that is the end of the story.
For Hytale, it was basically the plot twist.
Sold back and stripped down to the original vision
Instead of burying the project, Riot sold the rights to Hytale back to Simon Collins Laflamme, one of the original creators. That is rare. It effectively handed the game back to the person who helped dream it up in the first place.
Laflamme’s plan is simple on paper. Take Hytale back to its original vision, before the tech rewrites and ballooning features turned it into a monster. Smaller scope, clearer goals, and a focus on actually shipping something players can touch.
Here is the surprising part. You might expect that kind of reset to mean years of silence while the team slowly rebuilds. Instead, almost immediately after getting the rights back, Laflamme shared a 16 minute raw gameplay video of the current build of Hytale.
No cinematic trailer. No scripted demo. Just straight up gameplay.
The clip is described as raw and broken but still beautiful. That sounds like a warning, but watching it tells a different story. What is on screen already looks like a solid survival RPG. The world generation is genuinely pretty, with interesting terrain and a strong sense of atmosphere. The combat looks fluid and responsive, even if there is a bit of that floaty feel that is common in early builds.
It does not look like a disaster. It looks like an early access game that could realistically launch, find a community, and grow over time. And that might actually be the core of Hytale’s long running problem. The ambition and expectations were so high that anything short of a flawless, feature packed launch felt unacceptable.
Meanwhile plenty of other survival and sandbox games happily release with a humble set of features, then expand over months and years as players support them. Hytale might have been trying to skip that entire stage and head straight for perfection.
Breaking the silence and aiming for early access
Laflamme has been very clear about why he released this unpolished gameplay now. For years, Hytale had almost no communication. Long waits, vague updates, and constant delays turned players impatient and suspicious. The project became more rumor than reality.
After taking back control, Laflamme promised players more transparency: videos, screenshots, and actual information instead of radio silence. The raw gameplay drop is the first step toward that.
He explained that he wanted to break what he called the curse once and for all. That means no more waiting for some mythical perfect build before showing anything. Instead, the team will reveal what the game looks like as it is, flaws and all.
From here the plan is to get Hytale into early access. Laflamme says he is already heading back to work on that launch, and the team will keep sharing new clips and screenshots as development continues.
For players who have been following Hytale since 2018, that is a massive shift. We are no longer arguing about release windows that slide by year after year. We are finally seeing the actual game being played and hearing a straightforward goal: get an early access version into players hands.
If the gameplay video is any indication, Hytale is no longer trying to be an untouchable Minecraft slayer that only appears when it is perfectly finished. It is becoming what it probably should have been all along.
- A survival RPG with strong world generation and building
- Ambitious but not impossibly so
- Led again by its original co creator
- Focused on growing through early access instead of chasing perfection forever
After seven years of chaos, cancellations, and corporate ownership, Hytale now feels strangely more grounded and real than ever. It is still rough, but this time that might actually be the good kind of rough. The kind that players can jump into, explore, and help shape as it finally claws its way back into the spotlight.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/right-after-saving-hytale-from-7-years-of-development-limbo-its-new-owner-releases-16-minutes-of-raw-and-broken-gameplay-footage-to-break-the-curse-once-and-for-all/
