Welcome to Hypixel Studios
This is a really exciting day for us for two reasons. We’re not just announcing a game - we’re also taking a major step forward in our journey as game developers.
Hypixel started as just the two of us making Minecraft maps. We would spend endless hours cobbling our creations together and putting them online. Little by little we developed a following, and eventually we were able to launch our own server.
As the server grew, so did the team. Eventually, dozens of developers came together from all around the world. We shared a common goal: to create exciting experiences for our players and to have fun doing it.
To date, the Hypixel server has served more than 14 million players and earned four Guinness World Records including ‘most popular independent server for a videogame’. Even more importantly, it has brought together a community that we cherish being part of.
Our dream has always been to grow from a mod team into a fully-fledged game studio - to take everything we’ve learned and apply it to a new project that challenges and excites us. To allow our team to chase their ambitions, and to provide our community with even more opportunities to have fun, compete, and be creative.
That dream is Hypixel Studios, and our first game is Hytale.
You can discover more about Hytale all over this website. If you haven’t yet, go watch the trailer! Or check out the game page for an overview of what we’ve been working on for the last three years - a project that combines a new adventure game with Hypixel minigames and empowering tools.
So far, we’ve been able to self-fund the development of Hytale thanks to the success of the Hypixel server, but it’s an ambitious project and we want to make sure that it lives up to its potential. For that reason, we thought about several options for supporting the ongoing development of the game - from crowdfunding to preorders. In the end, however, we felt that outside investment was a better solution. Happily, we’ve been able to secure the funding necessary to take Hytale to the next level - and in the process we’ve met some amazing people who are in a position to help us deliver a game we’ll be proud of.
We initially approached Riot Games (developer and publisher of League of Legends) for advice back in 2016 - after all, they know what it takes to grow a successful studio with its roots in a modding community. Those initial conversations developed into a shared enthusiasm for what we are creating. As of today, we’re thrilled to announce that Hypixel Studios has launched with Riot Games as an investor. We consider ourselves very lucky to have established this relationship as we embark on this new chapter of our journey.
Joining Riot in their investment is an angel advisory group comprised of Anthony Borquez, Dennis Fong, Rob Pardo, Peter Levin, Jeff Lo and Min Kim among others. It’s humbling and exciting to be learning from these veteran game developers and industry experts. Many of us on the team grew up playing their games, and it’s incredible to think that some of their sons and daughters are now playing Hypixel.
This investment means that we’re able to level up our production values across many disciplines, and to provide stability for our team. It also allows us to avoid many common pitfalls of game development, like feeling pressure to release too early or overreliance on crowdfunding. This is our first game as a newly-formed studio, but we’re excited to embrace the challenges that lie ahead.
We’re grateful to Mojang and Microsoft, whose forward-thinking support for content creators from day one has allowed us to produce work that we’re proud of. The Hypixel server for Minecraft: Java Edition will continue to be actively developed by its own dedicated team.
Finally, and most importantly, we’d like to thank our community and everybody who has supported us over the last five years. Especially the Hypixel network volunteers, as well as the builders, players, and video creators who have allowed us to lay out such an exciting path for our future.
We can’t wait to go on this journey with you.
Simon and Rezzus
Hypixel Studios
