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The Minecraft-inspired sandbox RPG Hytale was canceled earlier this week, though even the most hopeful fans would probably admit that they'd suspected this might happen long before it became official. Some of the game's original developers, even those who left the studio years before this announcement, are sharing their stories in the wake of the news.
That includes Hypixel founder Simon Collins-Laflamme, who posted a lengthy rundown to Twitter of some of his experiences early in Hytale's development. When the studio was still operating independently, Collins-Laflamme says he "was burning maybe 350k to 400k a month on Hytale development - somewhat sustainable - but that was before Hypixel Skyblock and the server was on a decline so I needed funding soon to keep going at such pace."
Collins-Laflamme posits that "maybe that sense of limited funds urgency was a good thing looking back on it," but the stress of that financial pressure was certainly substantial. Riot began gradually investing in the studio in 2018, and fully acquired it in 2020. Collins-Laflamme himself left the studio in 2019.
"I think the pressure of having the Riot Games label + mega viral trailer, bigger funding and higher expectations made us all doubt ourselves back then," he says. "On a personal level, I couldn't live up to these new high expectations and was given an option to leave by Riot."
Despite that, Collins-Laflamme says he was confident in Riot's support. "Unknown public fact," he says, "I was offered WAY MORE money from a different company and walked out the moment of deal close (many people can attest to that) but decided to go with Riot in the end because I truly believed that they would give the team a better chance at success and more funding for the game."
Elsewhere in his post, Collins-Laflamme says Hytale seemed "maximum 2 years away" from release in 2019 before its scope started dramatically expanding, with other former devs criticizing "unrealistic ambitions" from higher-ups. Speaking on the producers Hypixel hired after the acquisition, he largely echoes comments from another former developer who said the studio's problems "were all internal" and shouldn't be laid at Riot's feet.
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