Cancellation and revival

On 23 June 2025, after ten years of development, Donaghey announced the game's cancellation and the closure of Hypixel Studios, citing its overly ambitious scope.^[28] Collins-Laflamme, the studio's co-founder, said at the end of June that he would approach Riot Games about buying the game back,^[29] and on 13 August announced that he was in active negotiations to acquire it.^[30]

Following the cancellation, Anego Studios, the developer of the sandbox survival game Vintage Story, announced its intention to create an adventure mode inspired by Hytale.^[31] This was later revealed as Project Glint, a standalone game created by former Hypixel Studios developers hired by Anego.^[32]

On 17 November 2025, Collins-Laflamme announced that he had reacquired Hytale from Riot Games.^[33][13] The game's website was relaunched alongside a post titled "Hytale is saved!", which stated that 30 developers had been rehired, with further hiring planned.^[34] A 16-minute video of "raw" gameplay from the legacy engine was released to YouTube the following day; despite the newer engine's abandonment, cross-platform support remained planned.^[35]

Early access release

Hytale entered early access on 13 January 2026 for Windows, macOS, and Linux,^[36][37][38] launching with Exploration and Creative modes as well as modding support.^[13] Collins-Laflamme said the game would not initially be published on Steam, citing its unfinished state.^[39] Pre-purchases opened on 13 December 2025, a week after account creation began.^[40] The game was sold in three editions: Standard, "Supporter", and "Cursebreaker (Founder's Edition)", with the base edition priced at US$20.^[41][42] Collins-Laflamme later stated that pre-purchase revenue had funded at least the next two years of development.^[43] The game surpassed one million players shortly after launch despite early server strain,^[1] and briefly became the most-watched game on Twitch, attracting more than 420,000 viewers.^[44] User-created mods emerged shortly after the game's early access release.^[45]

Post-release updates

The game's first update, released on 17 January 2026, added content including dinosaurs;^[46] further updates and hotfixes followed in the subsequent weeks.^[47] Updates settled into a cadence of weekly pre-release patches bundled into stable releases every two to six weeks, and were initially focused on bug fixes and foundational work.^[48][49] Update 5, released on 26 May 2026, added first-iteration game controller support, an in-game server browser for community servers, a friends list with Discord integration, and a "Trigger Volume" tool for scripting encounters without code.^[50][51]

The Hytale New Worlds Modding Contest, the game's first official modding competition, was launched by Hypixel Studios and CurseForge in March 2026, offering US$100,000 in prizes across three categories; the winners were announced in May.^[52][53] At the time of the contest's announcement, players had created more than 5,000 mods for the game, which had been downloaded over 20 million times on CurseForge.^[54] In June 2026, the studio announced "Hytale Shared Source", a programme releasing the game's full server source code, network protocol, and assets on GitHub to licensed players, with access modelled on Epic Games' Unreal Engine source programme.^[55]

Alongside these updates, work began on "chapters", larger content releases intended to advance the game's Cursebreaker storyline in Exploration mode.^[48] The first of these, Chapter 1, was previewed by Collins-Laflamme on 16 July 2026; he estimated it would be released within two to three months.^[56][57] Centred on the game's goblin faction, the expansion is planned to add the game's first handcrafted dungeon with a multi-stage boss fight, an ability system based on combining runes, gadgets, boats, and a set of party minigames, the game's first official mode beyond Exploration and Creative.^[57] Collins-Laflamme said development since the reacquisition had prioritised rebuilding tools and foundations over new content, as the team had resumed work from a build over four years old.^[56][57]

Early access

Hytale's early access release was well received by critics, who positively compared it to Minecraft. PC Gamer wrote that, despite Collins-Laflamme saying Hytale "isn't good yet", it "already feels pretty good", praising the release's gameplay, variety of biomes, and non-player characters.^[58] Eurogamer called it "already enjoyable", highlighting its variety of mechanics and environments.^[59] In its review, IGN generally praised the release's gameplay, controls, and variety, but criticised its general lack of direction.^[60]

Minecraft's creative lead Jens Bergensten said the two games should be more different and that he would "rather just play Minecraft", while calling Hytale "very polished" and expressing interest in playing it in the future.^[61][62]

Awards