Riot Games Acquires Hypixel Studios

Riot Games is getting pretty damn big these days: between Valorant, Legends of Runeterra, and of course League of Legends, they’re starting to really become a force to be reckoned with. Whereas no more than a few days ago they were just known as the League of Legends people, nowadays they’ve expanded their reach far beyond the realms of the MOBA that put them on the map – and earlier this week, they expanded their reach even further by purchasing their second independent studio in their long history, Hypixel Studios, the folks behind the Hytale, a Minecraft clone that focuses on co-op play and minigames.

Simon, from Hypixel studios, wrote this in an announcement blog:

Here’s the big news: Hypixel Studios is being acquired by Riot Games as an independent studio. We’ll continue to operate in the same way as we have before, but Riot will become our parent company and we’ll gain access to their expertise and resources. This means a bigger budget for Hytale, more security for our team, and advisory support from a company that knows how to launch and operate successful, long-running games.

Please note that this doesn’t affect the Hypixel Minecraft server or the team at Hypixel Inc at all. This acquisition only applies to Hypixel Studios.

Not too long ago, Riot Games announced they were partnering up with smaller studios to produce League of Legends adjacent games, such as a platformer and a strategy game. They called this initiative “Riot Forge”, and myself, among others, were probably expecting collaboration with smaller studios to go through this program from here on out. So this acquisition is a bit… surprising. To say the least. The logic behind the purchase was not made public, and while it could just be a bid to get in on Hytale before it goes big, there could be other forces operating in the background.

We’ll probably never find out, though.