"Sounds like the whining of a beaten dog" — Riot Games congratulated Hytale on its successful release, which it itself had rejected as a game with no future.

The story of Hytale turned out to be the most instructive and curious plot of 2026 in the gaming industry. Back in 2025, Riot Games officially buried the project, disbanded the Hypixel team, and called the game "too ambitious." Translated from corporate speak, the publisher did not believe the game would be successful. Today, the same Riot publicly congratulates Hytale on its triumphant early access launch, where the game attracted 2.8 million players and topped the Twitch charts.

In its tweet, Riot limited itself to a laconic: "Congratulations on early access 👊." The developers from the revived Hypixel Studios, who bought back the rights to the project, responded with diplomatic gratitude: "Thank you for helping bring Hytale home." However, the community considered this exchange to be bitter irony: fans note that the game survived despite Riot's decision, not because of it. As usual, gamers did not hold back in their expressions.

Now Riot, which could have added one of the biggest indie hits of the decade to its portfolio and expanded its influence beyond League of Legends, can only watch the success of a project that it itself deemed unpromising.