Hytale Becomes Twitch’s Most-Watched Game During Early Access Launch

For a game many people had written off just months ago, Hytale is off to a surprisingly strong start.

Within hours of its early access launch, the sandbox RPG surged to the top of Twitch, briefly becoming the most-watched game on the platform. At its peak, Hytale pulled in more than 420,000 concurrent viewers, trailing only the Just Chatting category overall.

Even after the initial surge cooled, interest remained high. The game continued to attract around 260,000 viewers, making it the most-watched video game on Twitch at the time and one of the platform’s largest categories overall. For an early access release, those numbers are hard to ignore.

What makes the moment even more remarkable is how close Hytale came to never launching at all. First revealed in 2018, the game exploded in popularity after its debut trailer racked up tens of millions of views and caught the attention of the Minecraft community. Riot Games later invested in and acquired the project in 2020, but as development stretched on and the game’s scope expanded, momentum slowly faded.

Last year, Riot announced it was ending development on Hytale, seemingly closing the door on the project. Then came the turnaround.

In November, Hytale co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme revealed that he had reacquired the IP from Riot. The team quickly regrouped, rehired dozens of developers, rebuilt major systems, and pushed toward an early access launch in a matter of weeks. So far, that gamble appears to be paying off.

Beyond its Twitch dominance, Hytale has reportedly generated enough early revenue to fund at least two more years of development. Its modding community also sprang into action immediately, with players already experimenting with custom content and even finding ways to run Doom inside the game on day one.

Hypixel Studios hasn't yet confirmed official player numbers, but Collins-Laflamme previously suggested the game could reach one million players on its first day. Whether or not that figure holds, the early signals point to something clear: interest in Hytale is very real.

The Takeaway

Hytale’s launch feels like more than a strong debut. It’s a rare second act. A game that was delayed, cancelled, and nearly forgotten has returned with momentum, community energy, and a clear appetite for what it wants to become. Early access rough edges aside, this looks less like a finished product and more like the beginning of a long, public rebuilding process, one that players seem eager to be part of.