It's a tough time to be the rival of a monopolistic, genre-defining giant. Sims rival Life by You was abruptly cancelled in 2024, inZoi reviews aren't exactly glowing, and Palworld is changing its mechanics amid its Nintendo lawsuit. Still, despite the historical challenges, one of Hytale's original developers wants to buy back the canceled Minecraft-inspired survival game from League of Legends owner Riot and has already outlined a roadmap.
Hytale was cancelled because studio Hypixel "couldn’t bring Hytale to life in a way that truly delivered on its promise." Founder Simon Collins-Laflamme said he believed the game was "maximum two years away from a PC release" over five years ago before the studio was sold to Riot. Now, Collins-Laflamme has laid out how he'd bring the game back to life.
"It's not gonna be perfect or what Hytale is supposed to be Day one," he starts, replying to a tweet about how things need to be completed first and can be made better later. "A lot of content would be cut early on," because he'd want to "release in some sort of alpha/in-dev version and get funding that way to complete the vision."
Yep. It's not gonna be perfect or what Hytale is suppose to be Day 1, that's ok. The cancellation might be a blessing in disguise to reset expectations and break the curse of perfectionism. If we can get the IP, of course.FYI, a lot of content would be cut early on, just to be…July 1, 2025
He says he doesn't know what state the game is in currently, "but one thing for sure is we could release it with just the creative mode to begin with" and work on adding more with the help of the community. He also points out Minecraft didn't start the way it is now, and "it ended up doing okay!"
If Collins-Laflamme does manage to get the IP back from Riot, he says the first months would be spent sorting out the technical issues and making sure the game actually works, aiming to achieve a "basic game loop." Then the team would share a public roadmap and start hiring people to make it happen.
"Would the game loop be fun," in this early stage, he asks? "Probably not the best, does not matter for this phase. Just need to get it out, then make it super fun over-time. The beauty of block games like this is that they don't rely entirely on survival/adventure features to be fun, you can just build/gather with friends and have fun as is, at least initially! Add creative mode as well and it would satisfy the needs of many."
If you've been keeping up with Hytale's development, don't think this means everything will be stripped back to the days when Collins-Laflamme owned the studio – he likes some of the new features.
"Everything good would stay in," he tweets. "The new combat looks amazing for example, much better than my days by miles."
It would be quite the comeback story if Collins-Laflamme manages to pull this off. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, check out the best games like Minecraft that you can play today.
