Hytale Was Cancelled in June 2025. Seven Months Later, a Million People Played It

On 23 June 2025, the fans who had waited nearly seven years for Hytale got the message they had feared. Riot Games announced that the block-building adventure was cancelled and that its studio, Hypixel Studios, would close. The project had simply grown too ambitious.

Then the story did something games almost never do. In November 2025, co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme announced that he had bought Hytale back from Riot. He rehired 30 developers, set an early-access date and opened pre-orders. On 13 January 2026, Hytale launched in early access on Windows, macOS and Linux, priced from $20, and passed one million players. On 12 October 2026, its first big content chapter, Chapter I: Out of the Breach, arrived.

Born on a Minecraft server

Hytale's roots go back to one of the most famous places in Minecraft: the Hypixel server, a huge multiplayer hub known for its minigames. In early 2015, members of the Hypixel team started work on their own game, one that would take the best of what they had learned running a Minecraft server and build it into a full engine of its own.

They teased it to their community on 9 December 2018 and revealed it on 13 December 2018. The trailer was a sensation, racking up more than 31 million views within a month. It promised a blocky fantasy world with adventure, combat, minigames and serious tools for creators. To many fans it looked like the game Minecraft might have become if it had been built around adventure from the start.

The Riot years

Hypixel Studios began self-financed, then raised several million dollars in an investment round led by Riot Games, the company behind League of Legends. In April 2020, Riot bought the studio outright.

The original plan was to have the game playable in 2021. It was delayed again and again. In July 2024, the developers said they were moving to a new engine. A C++ engine built from 2022 was later abandoned. By mid-2025 Riot decided that the scope was too large to finish and pulled the plug.

The buy-back

Collins-Laflamme did not let it go. In August 2025, he said he was in active negotiations to acquire the game. On 17 November 2025, he announced the deal: Hytale was his again. The relaunched website said 30 developers had been rehired, and the next day the team released a 16-minute gameplay video from the older "legacy" engine, the one they had decided to ship.

Things moved fast. Account creation opened on 8 December 2025 and pre-purchases on 13 December, exactly seven years after the original reveal. Collins-Laflamme later said that pre-orders had already covered the next two years of development costs, and he pledged ten years of personal commitment to the project.

Launch day

Early access opened on 13 January 2026 with two modes, Exploration and Creative, plus modding support from day one. Three editions went on sale: Standard, Supporter and the Cursebreaker founder's edition. Hytale is sold through its own launcher rather than on Steam.

Before launch, Collins-Laflamme said he expected more than one million players on day one. The game passed that mark, and on Twitch it drew more than 400,000 viewers, briefly becoming the most-watched category on the platform.

Critics were impressed. PC Gamer, Eurogamer and IGN praised its gameplay and variety and compared it favourably with Minecraft, although IGN felt the early-access build lacked direction. Even Minecraft's creative lead, Jens Bergensten, weighed in: he said he would "rather just play Minecraft", but called Hytale "very polished".

Building in the open

Since launch, Hypixel Studios has kept up a steady rhythm of updates:

• March 2026: the New Worlds Modding Contest, with $100,000 in prizes
• 26 May 2026: Update 5 adds first controller support, an in-game server browser and a friends list with Discord integration
• June 2026: Hytale Shared Source opens server source code, protocol and assets to licensed players
• 16 July 2026: first look at Chapter I
• 12 October 2026: Chapter I: Out of the Breach launches

Chapter I is the most significant update so far. It brings the game's first hand-crafted dungeon and a multi-phase boss fight, the kind of authored adventure content that fans felt was missing at launch.

By the numbers

• 2015: development begins among Hypixel server staff
• 31 million+: views of the 2018 reveal trailer in its first month
• April 2020: Riot Games acquires Hypixel Studios
• 23 June 2025: cancellation announced
• 17 November 2025: Collins-Laflamme buys the game back
• 30: developers rehired at the restart
• 13 January 2026: early access launch on Windows, macOS and Linux
• $20: starting price
• 1 million+: players after launch
• 400,000+: peak Twitch viewers

Why it caught fire

Seven years of pent-up demand. The 2018 trailer created an audience that never left. When the game was cancelled, that audience got angry. When it was saved, the anger became fuel.

A rescue story. Everyone loves an underdog. A founder buying back his own cancelled game from one of the world's biggest publishers is the kind of plot that sells itself.

Creators first. Mod support on day one, a large modding contest and shared server code all speak to the Minecraft generation that grew up building. Hytale gave them tools rather than a finished theme park.

A lesson for big publishers

There is an uncomfortable lesson here for the industry. Under one of the world's richest game companies, Hytale spent five years chasing a bigger, more modern version of itself and never shipped. Back in independent hands, with a smaller team and a willingness to launch something unfinished, it reached players within two months of the deal.

That is not proof that big companies cannot make great games. But it is a reminder that "too ambitious" is often a question of shape rather than size. Early access let Hypixel Studios ship the parts that already worked, sell them at a fair price and let the community fund the rest. The players did not demand a perfect game. They wanted to finally hold the one they had been shown in 2018.

What to watch

The big question for Hytale is pacing. Early access buys time, but the community now expects regular, substantial chapters like Out of the Breach. Console versions have not been announced, and the studio has not said when a full 1.0 release will arrive.

If you are new, Creative mode is a gentle place to start before tackling the new dungeon. For another 2026 survival hit that blew up on its first week, read our story on the pirate game Windrose (Windrose). And for a 2025 game that became huge with zero marketing budget, see Schedule I (Schedule I).

WGC's take: Hytale should be dead. Instead it is one of the most-played new games of 2026, run by a team that is now independent again. Whatever happens next, its comeback is already one of the best stories of the decade.