The Minecraft-inspired sandbox RPG Hytale is cancelled, but it’s not necessarily dead. In the wake of Riot’s decision to pull the plug on development last week, Hypixel Studios co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme has expressed interest in the possibility of bringing it back to life, and says he’s willing to put his money—a lot of money—where his mouth is.
Hytale was revealed to the world in 2018, when it had already been in development “for several years,” and developer Hypixel Studios was acquired by Riot just a couple years later. Instead of a planned 2021 release, though, numerous delays followed: Developer updates slowed to a crawl, and we never really saw anything more of it than the 2018 announcement trailer. Earlier this month, Riot finally cancelled the game, and closed Hypixel outright.
Recriminations and finger-pointing followed in the immediate wake of Hytale’s cancellation, as some developers took to social media to express their frustration with internal studio management at Hypixel.
But there was also a nearly-immediate push to “save Hytale,” which included outreach to Collins-Laflamme. He initially seemed reluctant to get involved, saying he hasn’t seen the game since 2019 and so can’t judge what sort of state it’s currently in, or what kind of team would be required to finish it.
As the pressure continued, though, his mind slowly begin to change. On June 26, Collins-Laflamme said he was thinking about it, and was “even down to put $25 million by myself to finish Hytale,” although he clarified that he hadn’t made any formal moves in that direction.
Two days later, he committed to reaching out, although he told followers to keep their expectations “extremely low,” because it’s “next to impossible” to bring back projects like this once they’ve been shut down. Even after he reaches out to Riot, he warned, “it will take months to get answers and months to get done.”
Since then, though, Collins-Laflamme seems to have settled into the commitment. On June 29 he posted “No risk, no story,” and shared a video posted by KweebecCorner of a messianic figure essentially heralding his return.
Earlier today, he posted this.
Enthusiasm notwithstanding, Collins-Laflamme’s caution from a few days ago is well placed. Riot might make Hytale available for acquisition and continuation, but it might not, too—there may be a feeling that its potential future value is worth more than what Collins-Laflamme is willing to sink into it. And even if Riot does surrender control, there’s no guarantee that anything will come of it, much less a game as hyped as Hytale has become.
Still, the fact that the effort is being made at all has fans excited: A long shot is better than no shot at all. We’ll see where it goes from here.
Read the full article here
