The chief developer behind the saving of Hytale has celebrated the game’s early access launch, declaring: “I have no regrets.”
Hypixel Studios founder Simon Collins-Laflamme issued an update a week on from Hytale’s release on PC (check out IGN’s Hytale early access review so far to see what we think). He said saving the game and releasing it had been “the most challenging but rewarding experience of my life.”
Hytale has endured a tumultuous development. It was announced in December 2018 with a trailer that so far has an incredible 62 million views on YouTube. The idea was to expand on the likes of Minecraft by combining the scope of a sandbox with the depth of a roleplaying game, all set in a procedurally generated world.
Excitement around Hytale was fueled by the experience of the developers themselves, who co-founded Hypixel, one of the most influential Minecraft servers in the world. League of Legends developer Riot Games invested in the project and, in 2020, bought the studio outright.
But in June last year development on Hytale stopped and Hypixel Studios began winding down operations. It was thought Hytale was canceled, destined never to release. But in November, Riot confirmed it had sold the rights to Hytale back to Collins-Laflamme as this “gives players the best chance to one day experience a revised version of the game they’ve been waiting for.”
In a statement published at the end of 2025, Collins-Laflamme expressed his “anger” at what had happened to Hytale over the years.
“The game has insane potential, but four years of engineering went into rebuilding the engine rather than gameplay features,” he said. “That leaves us with a four-year gap and a lot of catching up to do, and that rebuilt engine is never gonna be used.
“When you don’t invest in gameplay, you don’t just lose time. You lose momentum, iteration, and player feedback. Now the focus has to be on gameplay first and rebuilding trust by actually shipping things at a rapid pace.
“It’s a damn miracle we were able to salvage Hytale. It was barely playable. All basics were broken. Camera, movement, combat, crafting, building, gameloop, sounds, rendering. Everything, everything was wrong.
“It should have taken years to fix, but within weeks, we got the game into a playable, fun state. And now, instead of slowing down or celebrating a release, we have to keep pushing for years to make up for the time that was lost.
“So yes, I feel anger. And I’m turning that into focus and execution. I’m committing more money, more time, and personal sacrifice to deliver the game this vision deserves.”
Fast forward to the early access launch, and it sounds like all the heartache was worth it. Even before the early access launch, Collins-Laflamme said Hytale had already made enough money to cover the next two years of development. And now, he’s told fans he can call the launch a success.
“It’s now been seven days since early access launch and I can confidently say that I have no regrets saving Hytale, it’s been the most challenging but rewarding experience of my life,” Collins-Laflamme said in a post on X / Twitter.
“Thank you everyone for the amazing support, and a big thank you for the rebuilt Hytale team for trusting me to get this to the finish line in just a few months. I haven’t been involved with Hytale development for many years and coming back was a big unknown and risk for me, and my family. I fully trusted the people and it just worked. Amazing team, every single one made a big difference.”
Work on updating Hytale continues, with Update 2 coming this week. If you’re heading into Hytale, check out IGN’s comprehensive Hytale Progression Guide for a step-by-step walkthrough on how to get copper, thorium, adamantite, and more. To get around Hytale’s Zones and Biomes fast, you’ll need to know how to set up and use teleporters – and if you’d like to experiment with what the sandbox game can do, use Hytale commands to bend reality to your will, or install Hytale mods to add new creations to your game.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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