Hypixel gets acquired by Riot Games. - Another one bites the dust. Prepare for League of Minecraft.

Turnip_Head

Turnip_Head

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Nov 6, 2019
This actually makes me pretty bummed because I thought the game would be a great modding platform. Now it will be League of Minecraft.

https://www.pcgamer.com/riot-games-acquires-hytale-developer-hypixel-studios/

(Edit for clarity: Hypixel studio was formed by devs who originally worked on the “Hypixel Minecraft Server” but tried to make their own version/successor to Minecraft, “Hytale”. Just know that it’s going to be very popular with the kiddos.)

Back to the story:

Apparently the old CEO Simon “gracefully stepped down” to focus on his personal life and the old Hypixel Minecraft server.
The new CEO of Hypixel will be Noxy, who is coincidentally an old Riot employee. Hypixel is now also fully owned by Riot.

To be honest it wasn’t that hard to see this coming.
It was disclosed pretty early on that Riot was financially involved with Hypixel. And they never specified what model of monitization they would use, leaving the door open for Riot’s typical GaaS playbook. I didn’t expect full acquisition in the middle of development though. Especially when they have been posting blogs and making great progress so far. Debt Trap?
What was weird was that I never got a hint that they had staff from Riot. They always played it off like they were devs from the Minecraft server, which is why I thought the game would be modder friendly.
I still can’t tell if the original dev team were actually from Hypixel or if this has been a shell-game from the start.

This game will definitely not be modder friendly now, since GaaS games almost never are. Bethesda killed it’s own modding scene (and it’s rep) by trying to transition to Games as a Service.
In addition the game will also make you use a Riot account to log in of course.
First Epic now Riot building up a portfolio of games in their launchers. Tencent must be very, ve-ry eager to get into Steam’s corner of the market, I’d Say.

Why does it seem like all the good modding platforms are slowly getting snuffed out? *Sniffles*
 
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After milking their cow for a decade suddenly they want to bet their horse on every single videogame genre that were already milked to death on the last decade.
 
Smug Chuckler said:
Outside from shinier graphics, what will this game have to offer?
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In their flashy trailer they advertised a lot of tools that the Minecraft community had to add in themselves. Technical-stuff that would have been a really cool bridge into beginner-level modding.

It also added, in terms of base gameplay, a whole bunch of new gameplay mechanics that people have really wanted to have in Minecraft for a while. Basically Minecraft 2 in all but name. All of the previous Minecraft Clones thus far have never expanded on Minecraft’s mechanics properly or even regressed in some aspects. (With the sole exception of Terraria and other successful 2d games of course)

The devs, when they were still acting independent, said that they started Hypixel as a project because Microsoft changed the Minecraft TOS to take something like 80% in royalties from servers like Hypixel. So they started on making Minecraft 2. To save themselves from Microsoft’s oppressive Terms of Service. Seemed genuine enough reason for me to believe them. They also had a really successful trailer. Like around 40 million views before Riot was even mentioned, coasting just off the Hypixel name brand alone.

——

From what I can gather, I think they started off with genuine intentions with the game. Planned for a very modest launch, that probably would have gone the usual Early Access route. The, now ex-ceo, stated that he had only expected 40,000 views at most for the trailer, and thought that people would write it off as another Minecraft clone, but ended up getting 60 million views. I think that this pushed them to dramatically re-evaluate their plans for the game. Perhaps some of the ex-Riot employees involved might have encouraged the feature creep? They certainly would have championed Riot as the way to “meet expectations”.

I’m sure the real story behind development will come out only after a while unfortunately. Maybe the team played itself with the feature creep, they were first time devs, only having prior experience with modding Minecraft servers. Maybe the ex-Riot guys only wanted to hook up with their old colleagues for help and were more interested in the fame of developing Minecraft 2 than being some agent for Riot Incorporated. Maybe the devs got Zuckerberged. Who knows.
 
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Radical Cadre said:
The fuck is Hytale? I've literally never heard of it before this post on the Kiwi Farms.
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>Basically Minecraft is still in Notch’s management.
>A bunch of Minecraft nerds make server: Hypixel.
>It’s pretty successful.
>Microsoft buys Minecraft.
>Microsoft make big server owners pay tribute.
>Hypixel devs don’t like this and decide to take a shot at making Minecraft 2.
>After a couple years at the drawing board they release a game trailer. (Hytale)
>6 gorillian views.
>Turns out a lot of people want a proper Minecraft 2 game.
>You’re in the big leagues now laddy.
>Turns our some of your employees are ex-Riot employees.
>Corporate shenanigans ensue.
>???
>Riots Games now owns Hypixel Studios.
 
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Turnip_Head said:
>Microsoft make big server owners pay tribute.
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So, this part in particular I never understood. I ran Minecraft's lame-ass Java client for years and had several dozen people online regularly, often simultaneously. Never had to pay a dime and could probably boot that fucker up today if I had that PC with me and not elsewhere at the moment. The thing ran fine with no real issues or hitches.

Is running a private server really so difficult for people to handle? All the shit was there for free and a drunken monkey could set it up with a decent gaming PC and an ISP that isn't shit. I literally phased out my old PC (and added some more RAM on the cheap) when I upgraded my primary rig and turned the old girl into a dedicated server.

All of that said, cool for those guys for making their dream come true or whatever. But the circumstances do not compute.
 
Radical Cadre said:
So, this part in particular I never understood. I ran Minecraft's lame-ass Java client for years and had several dozen people online regularly, often simultaneously. Never had to pay a dime and could probably boot that fucker up today if I had that PC with me and not elsewhere at the moment. The thing ran fine with no real issues or hitches.

Is running a private server really so difficult for people to handle? All the shit was there for free and a drunken monkey could set it up with a decent gaming PC and an ISP that isn't shit. I literally phased out my old PC (and added some more RAM on the cheap) when I upgraded my primary rig and turned the old girl into a dedicated server.

All of that said, cool for those guys for making their dream come true or whatever. But the circumstances do not compute.
Click to expand...

Hypixel was not vanilla Minecraft, comparing it to a private server is apples to oranges.
Their are some reasons why both Microsoft and Riot took interest in them.

- First of all they had a monetization scheme, pay to be VIP or something like that.
- Secondly, these kinds of servers are massive, hosting tens of millions of players, basically fully fledged MMO’s in their own right.
- Thirdly, To attract so many players the server was heavily modified (Within Vanilla Minecraft’s limitations) and had a myriad of mini-games and scripts which could keep track of player game data and such. It was also one of the first servers to implement “Minecraft Hunger Games” the first true video game implementation of Battle Royale.
It’s in these mini-games spawned by modding communities, these little “games within games”, that entire new video game genre’s can form.

Riot would know this well since their cash cow: LoL was made as a copy of DOTA. Originally a mini-game mod for Warcraft 3 created in that game’s wild modding scene. When Riot Games saw the rise of the Battle Royale craze, they realized that they had missed their chance at making another huge cash cow. Just look at what Epic was able to do with it’s “mom’s credit card” Fortnite revenue. How badly do you think Riot would have liked to take Epic’s place?

Riot probably backtracked the Battle Royale craze to Minecraft mini-game servers like Hypixel and realized these kinds of things could be useful video game genre incubators. So they invested in Hypixel’s pet project. Got their people to get involved and generally keeping an eye on the Minecraft server scene.
 
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Turnip_Head said:
(With the sole exception of Terraria and other successful 2d games of course)
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Terraria wasn't inspired by Minecraft. The game was in development during Minecraft's development they just released their game a year later.
Turnip_Head said:
First of all they had a monetization scheme, pay to be VIP or something like that.
Click to expand...
Paid ranks and Loot boxes. Never forget the loot boxes.
 
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Shame we'll never see a real refinement of minecraft but they should've known better. I was already wary when I heard it was browser based from the start but this seals the deal. I wonder if the modding tools they showed off will even be released if not butchered.

There's always minetest and it's modpacks but once again it's just a clone not an overhaul.
 
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