Hytale's story so far has been a roller coaster. That roller coaster, after ten years in development, seems to have just hit the highest of highs, though.
After its tumultuous development, the Minecraft-like title entered early access yesterday, and its developer revealed that, at one point, the game had almost three million concurrent players.
More than ten years ago, in 2015, developers from the Minecraft server Hypixel began developing Hytale. After initially helping fund the title, Riot Games purchased Hypixel Studios, with a commitment to launching the game. In June 2025, however, Riot cancelled the project.
What ensued were months of negotiations between Hypixel creator Simon Collins-Laflamme and Riot, during which Collins-Laflamme sought to purchase the IP back from the League of Legends developers. After a final round of negotiations in November, Collins-Laflamme purchased the IP, and the project was revived. This leads us to yesterday, when Hytale finally hit early access.
The team at Hypixel Studios had high hopes for Hytale's early access launch, expecting around 1 million players to turn out. They were way off, though.
On a public Hytale server where the game's creator, Collins-Laflamme, was active under the username Simon, it was...
