Riot Games ends development of Hytale and closes Hypixel Studios

Riot Games has unexpectedly put a line through the development of Hytale, the long-awaited sandbox-rpg that resembles Minecraft. At the same time, the company closes its subsidiary Hypixel Studios, the team that has been working on the project since 2015.

†Too big and too complex

In a blog post, Hypixel Studios explains that the ambitions for Hytale have grown ever further in recent years. The project would have become too big and too complicated to be justified, especially now that the block-sandbox genre has grown up and players demand higher quality.

The team investigated several scenarios from significantly limiting the scope to extending the trajectory and even completely reviewing the development approach, but always concluded that these options would irreparable damage the original vision.

Closure and dismissal

With the stopping of Hytale also Hypixel Studios itself disappears. Although Riot Games does not mention the exact number of employees, the entire staff is expected to lose their jobs.

From success to cancelled title

Hytale was officially revealed in 2018. The project came from the team behind HypixelOne of the most popular Minecraft servers in the world. The combination of open cube world, rpg elements and extensive mod and creation's tools provided a lot of enthusiasm in the community.

Riot Games (known from League of Legends) invested in the project from the start and took over Hypixel Studios completely in 2020. However, since then, there have been repeated delays in a public playable version.

What does this mean for players?

The announcement comes for many fans like a damper. Hypixel players looking forward to a spiritual successor to their favorite server should now move to other projects in the genre. Riot Games has not yet announced whether there are plans to reuse or open source parts of Hytale elsewhere.

For the time being, this seems to be the final end of a game that managed to awaken hope and curiosity for almost ten years, but unfortunately never reached the audience.