Ex Hytale devs say the game looked "maximum 2 years away" from release in 2019 and "systems that were already far ahead of Minecraft" were changed under "unrealistic ambitions"

Following the cancellation of Minecraft-inspired sandbox RPG Hytale, Simon Collins-Laflamme, the original founder of developer Hypixel Studios and owner of the Hypixel server network, says the game didn't seem to be all that far from release when he last worked on the project before the studio was sold to Riot Games.

"During my time working on Hytale in 2016-2019, it was maybe to the absolute maximum 2 years away from a PC release with the legacy engine and vision," he said in a lengthy Twitter post. "I still have videos, screenshots and old client builds to attest to that. All developers from that time that I've talked to say the same."

Collins-Laflamme was responding to a post from former Hytale principal engineer Kevin Carstens, who implied "feature creep" was at the heart of the game's protracted troubles. "Systems that were already far ahead of Minecraft at the time were completely re-invented to make them 'even better' resulting fuck all," he said bluntly.

While he doesn't know "exactly what happened in the past few years," from his time at the helm, Collins-Laflamme says "the team back then was locked in and cracked beyond anything," making the kind of rapid progress that you wouldn't expect from a game that was cancelled after years with nothing to show for it publicly.

"The momentum was insane, we were in a stage where ton gameplay elements were getting introduced every single week and the game was shaping up fast towards release," he says. "There are already dozens of stories like this from former devs coming out in the past few days. and we didn't need to release in a 'perfect state,' in my opinion."

This assessment echoes much of the disappointed Hytale community's response to the game's abrupt cancellation, namely: the studio probably could've released something and iterated on it in an Early Access-like format. Instead, from the dev accounts that have been shared, it sounds like perfect became the enemy of good and it all came to nothing after a bloated production.

A thread from former Hytale dev Sphax, who worked on the game "during its early-development days," seems to detail some of those promising features, including: blocks that could stream video in-game, real-time block painting, submerged blocks "way before Minecraft," and playable "mini-games on a single block."

"Back then, Hytale ’s ambition kept ballooning; the story mode grew bigger and bolder," Sphax said. "In hindsight, I wonder if ambition without guardrails eventually sank the project..."

Hammering the nail right in, Carstens said elsewhere: "I am certain we could have hit the market with Hypixel style minigames + modding suite but without a story / campaign in 2021 if production and design didn't start to torpedo the potential due to their unrealistic ambitions."

In a separate post responding to a Hytale fan mourning the game, Collins-Laflamme stressed that "there are no other games like this" and "the amount of content the game had was immense" even during his tenure pre-Riot.

"Everyone loses by not getting Hytale, there are no winners. Even those who are capitalizing to promote their games this week in the replies / other soc meds would have greatly learned from what was accomplished. A unique artistic experience that only a handful of people got the chance to be a part of.

"I have tried ALL games like Minecraft / Hytale out there, all of them. None gave me the feeling of walking around in Hytale. No one has managed to merge art of all kinds like Hytale did. From art to engineering, coming together to create a beautiful world. Wish there was something that could be done but it’s pretty much too late at this time."

Ex-Hytale dev tells fans who waited 7 years only for the Minecraft-inspired sandbox RPG to get canceled they "should be angry at the mismanagement" at Hypixel Studios, not Riot: "The issues were all internal."