It looked like it was well and truly over for Hypixel's Hytale. The Minecraft competitor that had been in the works for a long while was effectively canned when Riot Games decided to pull its publishing support for the project, a decision that seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for the game. But then things surprisingly changed and the project was revived when its rights were handed back to its creator. Now we have another big and promising update to report on.
In a blog post, it has been revealed that Hytale will be launching into Early Access as soon as January 13, 2026. Two weeks after the game was reacquired by its founders, we now know when we'll be able to dive into the project.
It won't be the flashy new version that was in the works, as rather the developers are shifting back to a legacy build from around four years ago, which will seemingly see it sacrificing its crossplatform goals.
"We stepped away from the newer engine, which was intended to be a complete cross-platform rewrite, and we are now focused on reviving the original version. This required picking, choosing, and merging more than 300 GitHub branches into a single working branch. It was a significant engineering effort, but we're now confident enough to launch early access."
Hypixel does express that some parts of this game, due to this decision, will feel old and outdated and that the modding and creative tools won't nearly be where they want them to be in the long term, but they should still function for day one fun.
Beyond this, it's affirmed that the game will open pre-purchases on December 13, but the developers aren't too bothered if you do snag a copy at this point or not, as they explain the following.
"If you don't feel comfortable pre-ordering, please don't. This is true early access, meaning it's still very much unfinished and will be buggy for a while, but you have my and the team's commitment to make Hytale the game we've always wanted it to be."
We're told to expect even more updates on the project soon, so stay tuned.