Hytale is coming, having spent more than half a decade in limbo at Riot Games, which has now decided to divest it and turn the rights over to Hypixel’s original founders. And while that’s awesome, the game’s newly announced price tag is bound to shake the industry and have Minecraft fear for its life.
As per the official Hypixel X account: Hytale will cost no more than $19.99 at launch, which is some 10 bucks cheaper than Minecraft, and follows a precedent set by Silksong that is bound to continue influencing indie pricing for the foreseeable future. After five years in a drawer at Riot Games, Hytale was re-purchased by its original creators, who initially sold it to Riot in 2020. Now, the game is finally coming out and for dirt cheap.
Aside from being cheap itself, Hytale will “take zero percent from modders and server owners for at least the first two years,” which will make server hosting and plugin development much easier and, well, cheaper as well. With all these pricing schemes, the game, which already has millions of views on its gameplay videos accrued over only a few days, will probably shake the foundations upon which Minecraft still stands.
The latter has had extremely slow development, releases significant features at a reduced rate, and though it involves the community overall, it doesn’t often ask them to develop things on their own. Hytale, however, is going to let people pitch features and do bounties, expanding the game alongside its very developers. And with a low price and almost no barriers to entry, it is bound to be a significant competitor in this weird genre that has been almost fully monopolized by Minecraft.
It’ll also probably inspire more indie developers to take Silksong‘s note and start pricing their games lower, which should overall bring the cost of games down, leaving only AAA publishers to wallow in their $80 empire of dirt.
Hytale doesn’t yet have a concrete release date, but its lead developer, Simon, wishes to see it out as soon as possible, even with the jank and bugs, because fans have waited far too long.
