Hytale Is Saved: Riot Returns Rights, Original Creators Take Back Control

In a turn few fans saw coming, Hytale, the long-dormant sandbox RPG once thought to be dead, has been brought back to life. Riot Games has officially sold the project back to its original co-founder, Simon Collins-Laflamme, who now leads a rebuilt independent team committed to finishing the game on their own terms.

For a community that had already mourned Hytale’s cancellation earlier this year, the news feels almost surreal. The announcement came directly from the official Hytale site, where Collins-Laflamme confirmed that ownership has fully returned to the founding team and that more than 30 former developers have been rehired to continue development.

“Together, we are going back to the original vision for Hytale. We are fully independent and personally committed to funding Hytale for the next 10 years.”

The Handover

Riot’s involvement with Hytale began in 2020 when it acquired Hypixel Studios, the original developer behind the ambitious hybrid of creative sandbox building and story-driven RPG gameplay. But despite initial enthusiasm, the project struggled under its own scope. After multiple delays and an unfinished cross-platform engine, Riot officially shuttered the studio in early 2025.

The newly reacquired team, now independent, has purchased back all rights and technology, freeing it from Riot’s production pipeline. According to the official post, the goal is to rebuild the game on the legacy engine that powered Hytale’s early playable prototypes, the version that first captured community attention years ago.

Collins-Laflamme and co-founder Philippe Touchette have personally committed to funding the next phase of development to ensure complete creative freedom.

The Restart Plan

Instead of promising a large-scale, cross-platform launch, the developers are scaling back to deliver a stable, focused experience first. The initial Early Access release will target Windows PCs, with Linux and macOS versions following later. Console development is postponed until the PC version is feature-complete.

The rebooted roadmap focuses on Hytale’s original strengths: sandbox exploration, adventure progression, and modding support. Early builds will re-introduce Creative Mode, open-world exploration, and an initial set of RPG systems before layering on more complex mechanics.

Crucially, Collins-Laflamme promises an open development model, regular updates, transparent communication, and player feedback shaping future content. “We don’t want to disappear for years again,” he wrote, emphasizing that the team will release playable versions as soon as they are stable enough for testing.

“We're releasing features and iterating on them later. Many features will be in their own "Version 1": functional but early stage. We're focused on getting core systems working together rather than perfecting each one in isolation. Expect very frequent updates. Moving fast means things might break more often. Saves could be affected. Systems might change. That is the trade-off of speed.

We're committing to transparent communication with patch notes and development updates.”

Community Response and Transparency

The revival announcement was met with an outpouring of support across social media and Reddit. Longtime followers described the moment as “the comeback nobody expected.” Others praised the developers’ honesty, noting that Collins-Laflamme has repeatedly acknowledged that Hytale isn’t ready yet, but that the team is committed to “making it good, then great.”

In an interview highlighted by PC Gamer, he reiterated that Early Access will be priced modestly, around $20 USD, to reflect the game’s work-in-progress nature. That transparency has been central to winning back a community that once feared Hytale had vanished for good.

The move also reunites many of the original developers behind the beloved Hypixel Minecraft server network, whose design philosophy, creative freedom, strong modding tools, and community-driven worlds, laid the foundation for Hytale’s concept years ago.

A Revival Worth Watching

Hytale’s comeback stands out as one of the most hopeful stories in modern indie development. A project once cancelled by one of the largest publishers in gaming is now back in the hands of its creators, leaner, focused, and free to pursue the vision that first inspired millions of sandbox fans.

The team has promised more updates soon, including development blogs and a public Early Access timeline. Players can follow progress through the official site and social channels as the project rebuilds itself from the ground up.

And when that long-awaited release finally arrives, multiplayer adventurers will have a new home waiting. Host Havoc will offer managed Hytale server hosting at launch, giving players the same fast, reliable infrastructure used by thousands of other survival and sandbox communities. With scalable hardware, low-latency global data centers, and easy configuration tools, Host Havoc will ensure that exploring, building, and surviving in Hytale’s revived world runs as smoothly as its creators intended.