The gaming industry is constantly trying to create killers of this or that – projects that can push the colossuses of the genre from their comfortable places. Almost never, these attempts are successful, as the creators of Hytale had to learn.
Hytale is a survival sandbox game that looks suspiciously like Minecraft. It was in development for about seven years under the auspices of publisher Riot Games. Recently, its creators announced the complete cancellation of the project: it will not be released in any form, and the Hypixel Studio will close in the coming months.
According to the authors, the genre evolved rapidly during the game’s development, and Hytale could not reach the required quality level to compete with its leading representatives. At some point, the game changed the engine, but this did not help much – it turned out that there was even more work ahead. Various options for reducing the scale or moving the release dates were unacceptable, so the project was completely canceled.
At the same time, the studio noted that it is incredibly proud of the work done:
We still believe in Hytale. We believe in the team, and we are eternally grateful to every single person, past or present, who has poured their love into the game. We are also incredibly proud of the work we have done: the world we have created, the risks we have taken, and the heart we have poured into this project. None of that can be taken away.
Hytale was inspired by the popular Hypixel server for Minecraft – the game was announced in 2018, but it had been in development since around 2015. The announcement trailer has collected over 61 million views, so the project was highly anticipated.