'It's a damn miracle we were able to salvage Hytale,' original co-founder and new owner Simon Collins-Laflamme says: After years in development at Riot, 'it was barely playable'

It was a happy ending for Hytale fans, or at least a happy new beginning, when original co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme acquired the game from Riot in November 2025 and set about getting it ready for launch. But there are other emotions in play as well: In an X post earlier this week, Collins-Laflamme said he feels "anger" about all the time that was wasted following Hypixel's initial acquisition by Riot, and that it's a miracle the new development team has been able to turn it around.

"The game has insane potential, but four years of engineering went into rebuilding the engine rather than gameplay features," Collins-Laflamme wrote. "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."

Hytale was "barely playable" when he reassumed control, Collins-Laflamme said, and all the game's basic systems 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."

And from that comes the feeling of anger, but also "focus and execution," Collins-Laflamme said. "I’m committing more money, more time, and personal sacrifice to deliver the game this vision deserves."

Collins-Laflamme has pretty consistently undersold Hytale in its immediate post-Riot state, essentially warning eager followers not to get their expectations for the initial release too high. In November 2025, for instance, he released 16 minutes of "raw and broken" gameplay footage that PC Gamer's Harvey Randall judged considerably less harshly.

Shortly thereafter, Collins-Laflamme confirmed Hytale would launch into early access at $20, an "aggressively low" price he felt was appropriate because the game, in his estimation, just isn't very good in its current state. "My team and I will push hard to make it good, then great," he said at the time. "The vision is clear and progress is fast."

That approach appears to be working well, and the team is sticking with it: When asked how developers are turning Hytale around so quickly, Collins-Laflamme replied: "No meetings, trust the team, push to main and pray. Solid vision, no prototypes. Cutting some corners, will pay some tech debt later. Lower expectations means we don't need to make 5 prototypes for a single feature to try to reach perfection. We make all features V1 and then make it good later."

A release date for Hytale hasn't been set yet, but Hypixel recently announced that it will not be released on Steam when it launches into early access.