Minecraft-style sandbox game Hytale looks set to be a significant hit even at the early access stage. Hot on the heels of predicting over 1 million players for tomorrow’s launch, its developer has said Hytale has already made enough money to cover the next two years of development.
In a social media post, Hypixel Studios founder Simon Collins-Laflamme said that the next two years of dev costs are now covered through Hytale pre-purchases. He added: “combined with my personal commitment of 10 years, we are looking very strong for the future.”
Three pre-purchase options are available: the Standard Edition costs $23.99; the Supporter Edition costs $41.99; and the Founder’s Edition costs $83.99. Collins-Laflamme confirmed the Hytale development team is now “50+ or so.”
It all points to enormous early success for Hytale, which has endured a tumultuous development. Hytale was announced in December 2018 with a trailer that has an incredible 62 million views on YouTube. Here’s the official blurb, as it was back then:
Hytale combines the scope of a sandbox with the depth of a roleplaying game, immersing players in a procedurally generated world where teetering towers and deep dungeons promise rich rewards throughout their adventures. Hytale supports everything from block-by-block construction to scripting and minigame creation, delivered using easy to use and powerful tools.
Excitement around Hytale was fueled by the experience of the developers themselves, who co-founded Hypixel, one of the most influential Minecraft servers in the world. Riot invested in the project and eventually bought the studio.
But in November, League of Legends developer Riot Games confirmed it had sold the rights to Hytale back to Collins-Laflamme after it had acquired the game back in 2020. Riot said that after considering “a range of options,” it decided to sell the IP rights back to Collins-Laflamme as this “gives players the best chance to one day experience a revised version of the game they’ve been waiting for.”
Development on the game had been stagnating despite its sale to Riot, but Collins-Laflamme set out to resurrect the dying IP, confirming he had rehired scores of developers who had worked on it.
In a statement published at the end of 2025, Collins-Laflamme expressed his “anger” at what had happened to Hytale over the years.
“The game has insane potential, but four years of engineering went into rebuilding the engine rather than gameplay features,” he said. “That leaves us with a four-year gap and a lot of catching up to do, and that rebuilt engine is never gonna be used.
“When you don’t invest in gameplay, you don’t just lose time. You lose momentum, iteration, and player feedback. Now the focus has to be on gameplay first and rebuilding trust by actually shipping things at a rapid pace.
“It’s a damn miracle we were able to salvage Hytale. It was barely playable. All basics were broken. Camera, movement, combat, crafting, building, gameloop, sounds, rendering. Everything, everything was wrong.
“It should have taken years to fix, but within weeks, we got the game into a playable, fun state. And now, instead of slowing down or celebrating a release, we have to keep pushing for years to make up for the time that was lost.
“So yes, I feel anger. And I’m turning that into focus and execution. I’m committing more money, more time, and personal sacrifice to deliver the game this vision deserves.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
