Hytale Mismanagement, Apparently
A Difficult Update About Hytale
Just found out Hytale is being cancelled, and pretty upset by that. This reeks of insane mismanagement. Apparently, one of the former developers, DevSlashNull, came out and said the problem was not Riot (who bought Hypixel Studios in 2020), but internal problems to the Hytale team specifically. Additionally, Simon, one of the cofounders of Hypixel, blamed the producers.
Hytale Collapse Blamed on Hypixel Studio's Leadership, Not Riot Games
Here's what DevSlashNull had to say:
Hytale: what could possibly go wrong when you hire new leadership that thinks the original team is incompetent?
Oh the whole project ends up going in circles until it dies.
The community should be angry at the mismanagement that stole the opportunity for hytale to flourish.
They elaborate further in a separate tweet:
Riot was an absolute pleasure to work with, from people to leaders. They understood the power of empowering and giving folks agency. The issues were all internal to Hytales leadership.
I've been waiting on this game for a long time (SEVEN YEARS), and they already had a lot done, judging from the dev videos and blogs they released, but now their latest blog post expects us to remember the journey fondly as if we were able to even play any beta or alpha version, which we weren't.
I'm sorry Hypixel Studios, but people are going to be pissed when you show off a bunch of really cool things for the past 7 years and then just suddenly announce a cancellation out of the blue with no real reasoning behind it other than "we felt it wasn't in the right place to release". That's just stupid.
Open beta and early access games are released all the time now, and they are used to gain some monetary support for early development, so you could have chosen that path if you wanted, *especially* for a Minecraft-like game, considering that was also what Minecraft *itself* did.
However, the biggest reason why I'm so pissed is because they *literally* had what was a working beta game, back in 2022:
Summer 2022 Development Update
They even had working map building tools that they showed us! And they showed off combat back in 2021:
Winter 2021 Development Update
Summer 2021 Development Update
They spent 7 years showing us a bunch of game mechanics that they have made, and then the past 3 years they decided randomly to redo the rendering engine, after having spent years showing us game mechanics using an already really good rendering engine. Then, it ends up that this new renderer doesn't even look *that* much different than the old one aside from the lighting changes:
Summer 2024 Development Update
It's absolutely crazy. They literally had a working game back in 2023, that probably wasn't perfect, but it would have been good enough for early access or an open alpha, or maybe even an open beta. They had combat AI, they had personalizing your character, they had different animals and tools and rails. They had dynamic lighting! And all of that back in 2022!
And DevSlashNull literally tells us that they had a working game before the engine overhaul:
Asked by a fan whether the team ever had a version of Hytale running prior to the game's 2022 engine overhaul that "would have satisfied players if it would have been released", DevSlashNull responded: "I think so, some of the best moments for me in the team was us playtesting and running pvp tournaments internally on that engine. It was fun and had tons of potential."
One of the former developers gives us the hint that I pretty much expected of what went wrong:
Other ex-devs backed that up, calling out constant reinvention as a major issue. Former principal engineer Silkey explained that some systems, which had already outpaced Minecraft’s, were rebuilt from scratch for no good reason.
In 2022-2023 they announce the new engine, updates slowed down, and their updates consisted of barely anything except concept art and work on the "new engine". We stopped getting mechanics updates, we stopped getting gameplay videos. Back in 2023 was around the time they "reiterated their new vision for the game", so to me, that pretty much corroborates what Silkey and others were saying.
I also just found out that one of the creators of Vintage Story used to work for Hytale! This I think just proves clearly how badly Hytale must have been mismanaged, particularly in the last 3 years.
Hope is not lost for Hytale yet, however. There are two people looking at possibly funding the game to continue development: the creator of Stardew Valley, and Simon, the co-founder of Hypixel.
In the meantime, I definitely recommend trying out Vintage Story:
Vintage Story: Hytale Fans, You are Welcome Here
Jul 01 · 6 days ago
2 Comments ↓
It sucks that th game you waited for was canceled so abruptly.
But, I think, I’ve something similar, to ease your disappointment:
This project probably has much less content and richness but it is open source so you might be able to make your voice count during development.
Give it a try!
🚀 clseibold [OP] · Jul 01 at 11:24:
@Aelspire Thanks! Will do! It looks pretty cool.
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