Five months ago, Hypixel announced that the studio was shutting down, which also meant the end of the long-awaited game project Hytale. Riot Games acquired the developer and the project in April 2020 and reportedly requested a change in game engine, which caused numerous problems.
Now, however, Simon "Hypixel" Collins-Laflamme has surprised fans with the news that he has regained the rights from Riot Games and that Hytale will return to its original 'Legacy' engine and vision. The reason for that, according to Collins-Laflamme, is that the new 'Cross-platform' engine is significantly behind when it comes to gameplay features and would take at least two years to get to the same point as the original engine. This made the decision for the studio, which, however, still plans to make the Legacy engine cross-platform compatible at a later time, thus opening up compatibility beyond PC.
For now, Collins-Laflamme has already rehired over thirty developers from the Hypixel team, with more expected to return soon. The early access date will be announced soon and is likely to be relatively close, although the creator has warned that it will be a true early access release, with crashes, bugs, and broken features to be expected. It will be a long road to version 1.0, too, estimated to be 'at least a few years' away.
In its current state, Hytale already features over 100 NPCs and thousands of items and blocks, but many of these are not yet properly configured. The Adventure Mode won't be ready at the early access launch, and the same goes for the official minigames. The team is aware that these were an important part of the original Hytale vision, but the infrastructure and minigames are not yet ready. However, they have a dedicated team that will focus on implementing minigames once the core game is stable. In the meantime, the community can start creating their own minigames, custom servers, and experiences. When the official minigames go live, their assets will also be shared, allowing the community to develop their own versions.
Indeed, Hytale will be all about modding from the very beginning. Collins-Flamme says it is possible to mod almost everything, both content and server-side, and claims that even non-developers can create impressive experiences with minimal technical knowledge. The development team promised to share server source code access within several months, allowing users to create their own custom servers, maps, adventures, and more.
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