Update: Hypixel founder Simon Collins-Laflamme has provided some clarificiation of the FAQ answer outlining the reasons the studio aren’t launching Hytale on Steam right out of the gate. “The wording around ‘over-indexing’ was confusing and misinterpreted by many, making it sound like we were avoiding Steam because of negative reviews,” he wrote in a post on the tweeter explaining the need for the update, taking responsibility on his and executive director Patrick ‘Lyall’ Derbic’s parts for not being clear enough in their phrasing.
“We want to spend our time in Early Access working with our existing community to improve the game, rather than chasing a flood of cold first impressions that could overcorrect the game’s direction,” the meat of the FAQ response now reads. “We don’t shy away from honest, negative criticism; we have been very critical of the state of the game ourselves on social media. We simply want the first steps of our journey to be influenced by informed players rather than large-scale first impressions from those unfamiliar with the game’s development background.”
Original story follows:
Revived Minecrafty survivabuilder Hytale got a fresh early access release date of January 13th the other week. However, the team behind it how now confirmed you shouldn’t expect to see it hit Steam at that point, with the game’s executive director not seeing the need to knock on Valve’s pipe-laden door yet and keen to avoid an early access spent drowning in negative reviews.
This comes from the first post adressing frequently asked questions that Hytale’s current devs have put out since securing the rights to it from Riot. Right off the bat, executive director Patrick ‘Lyall’ Derbic addressed whether the game’ll be hitting the Steam platform.
“No, not initially,” he wrote. “We want to spend our time in early access working with the community and improving the game, rather than overindexing on negative reviews from players that aren’t as well-informed yet about what we are doing. Steam is a great marketing tool, but one that we might never need. This doesn’t mean we will never be on Steam – just that we do not see the necessity of it yet.”
On one hand, working with a more concentrated group of players you can grill for in-depth thoughts on the game early doors sounds like a good plan, especially since the team have been very clear what folks will be getting on day one will be quite rough around the edges and have lots of room to grow. On the other, there’s perhaps an argument that initially ducking criticism from folks outside of those likely already keen on the proposition of Hytale could potentially lead to blind spots in terms of helping it appeal to a wider audience down the line.
In any case, I’m not a game developer and certainly appreciate the tough task any game nowadays faces in carving out a reputation for itself that can attract eyeballs and avoid being buried amid the massive avalanche of games constantly competing for players’ hours.
The rest of the FAQ post saw Derbic acknowledge things like the fact the team are working on getting region-specific pricing up and running for “a limited number of countries to start with”, with $20 being the base price worldwide for now. Extra cosmetics will be added, but there’ll be no pay-to-win offerings as far as monetisation goes. Finally, pets, animal taming, and fishing are all in the works, but won’t be there in January.
The full thing’s also worth giving a read if you’re unsure about the different permutations of the three different editions of Hytale being sold out of the gate. Derbic and co have also shared the hardware specs you’ll need to meet to comfortably get the sandbox up and running on your machine.
