Hytale's Early Access surges past 1 million players as $19.99 sandbox RPG returns from the brink

Hytale’s officially “rocky” Early Access has finally gone live, with expectations and demand for the game far exceeding Hypixel Studios’ dreams. This newfound attention has prodded developers to caution fans that the game’s launch week will have its ups and downs, but despite the hurdles, they’ll do their best to get everyone in.

The lead developer behind the revived project, Simon Collins-Laflamme, expected over 1 million players on launch day, and he seemed to be spot on, given the game’s massive surge in popularity overnight. The sandbox blocky RPG, often dubbed a successor to Minecraft by many eager fans, finally went live on January 13 at 7 a.m. PST. It’s currently available for gamers on PC, Mac, and Linux, priced at $19.99 for the Starter Edition.

It's a miraculous turnaround for Hytale and Hypixel Studios after its turbulent development history. The project was acquired by Riot Games in 2020 and was subsequently canceled in June 2025. Following Riot's announcement, the original founders reacquired the rights to Hytale and Hypixel Studios for an undisclosed amount and began working toward an early access release using prior builds in November 2025.

After several announcements and updates on the project, it seems the developers over at Hypixel Studios kept their word of a swift early access launch, specifically a mere eight weeks after the initial announcement.

Hypixel Studios published a blog post highlighting what fans and gamers should expect in the early access release and said that, “The demand has exceeded our expectations, which means launch week will be bumpy, but everyone will get in.”

Collins-Laflamme previously mentioned that he had very high hopes for Hytale’s second coming, expecting to welcome “over 1 million players” on release day, which is a tough player count to handle, given that the studio started working on the game with early builds in November 2025.

Strangely enough, Hypixel Studios has handled its launch day issues just fine so far. Players on forums and Reddit mentioned short login queues upon the game’s launch, but many gamers have been patient, with one stating, “I guess we just gotta wait for the servers to calm down.”

However, this is just the beginning for Hypixel Studios, as Hytale continues to take shape with future updates. The developers have promised they are already working on patches for bugs and crashes, which will hit the pre-release patchline once they have rolled out a good chunk of fixes.