A gigantic art piece with “#Save Hytale” has been painted on WPlace over Santa Monica. A community effort by fans of the cancelled sandbox game, this digital display happens to hover over the Riot Games office, which owns the late games’ developer Hypixel.
Hytale was cancelled back in June and developer Hypixel announced it was winding down its operations. The game was first announced in 2015 and churned up a lot of excitement over the years, but after gaining investment by Riot Games and eventually getting acquired by the gaming giant, the plug was pulled.
The statement released as part of the game’s cancellation stated that additional funding from other companies was pursued by Hypixel, to little luck. Unfinished and without any more Riot Games money, it’s been left derelict. The game had run into considerable development issues in recent years, requiring ample amounts of work to get it over the line. The game remaining unreleased ten years after its reveal clearly was a breaking point for further funding.
Enter Wplace, a website that’s currently taking the internet by storm, allowing people to paint pixels placed over a shared online version of Google Maps. Each user can colour a pixel every 30 seconds, allowing for vast art projects and chaotic canvases and myriad doodles for individual folks around the world.
While Hytale may be dead, there are still a passionate collection of fans who are still clinging on to the dream of Hytale surviving somehow. Be it through original Hypixel founder Simon getting the IP back somehow, or some alternative path forward. These people came together and collectively created what remains the largest singular art piece in LA on the website.