Hytale developer Hypixel Studios begins 'winding down'
One of Northern Ireland's highest-profile gaming companies has announced it is winding down its operations.Founded in 2018 in Londonderry, Hypixel Studios first project was to be the block-based fantasy game Hytale.The Derry company was acquired in 2020 by Riot Games, one of the world's biggest game publishers.In a statement, Hypixel co-founder Aaron Donaghey said the company is ending Hytale's development and the winding down of Hypixel Studios is under way.
"This is not the outcome any of us - at Hypixel or at Riot – wanted," Mr Donaghey said."But after years of pushing forward, adapting, and exploring every possible path, it became clear we couldn't bring Hytale to life in a way that truly delivered on its promise," he added.The team of about 100 game developers – the majority of which are internationally based remote workers – will be "supported with generous severance and resources" by parent company Riot Games, Mr Donaghey said.Mr Donaghey said calling time on Hytale "is a painful decision".
"We still believe in Hytale," Mr Donaghey said."But after years of pushing forward, adapting, and exploring every possible path, it became clear we couldn't bring Hytale to life in a way that truly delivered on its promise."A YouTube trailer for the now abandoned game has been watched over 60 million times.He said the Hypixel server on Minecraft – which has had more than 18m visitors - is unaffected by the winding down of the studio.Game development, Mr Donaghey added, is "brutally hard".
'Complex and expensive'
Professor Kevin Curran from Ulster University's school of computing, told BBC Radio Foyle that the gaming industry globally is seemingly affected by "a post pandemic correction".During Covid-19, he said, there had been a massive boom in "user engagement and revenue for games"."Games are incredibly complex and expensive to develop and can take five to seven years to develop a game."A lot of gaming companies are restructuring and cutting staff and have been for a good while, " Prof Curran said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
11 minutes ago
- BBC News
What are the government's planned welfare changes?
A significant number of Labour MPs are threatening to vote against the government's working-age welfare reform plan when it comes before the House of Commons next reforms are designed to reduce the overall working-age welfare bill by about £5bn a year by the end of the rebel MPs have signed an amendment to the legislation that makes a series of objections, including a lack of official consultation and impact Verify explains the detail of the reforms and their possible impact. Which benefits would be cut? The government wants to save money by:making it harder for people to access Personal Independence Payments (Pip)cutting the rate of incapacity benefitIncapacity benefit - which is mainly paid through the health element of Universal Credit - goes to those deemed to be unable to work for health benefit is set to be reduced by 50% in cash terms for new claimants from April 2026. For existing claimants, it is due to be held flat in cash terms until 2029-30 - meaning payments will not rise in line with inflation. The government estimates these two changes will save £3bn a year by the end of the is paid to people with a long-term physical or mental health condition or a disability and who need support. Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has acknowledged that almost 20% of recipients are in work. The government plans to make it more difficult for people to claim the "daily living" element of Pip from 2026-27. Under the current assessment system, claimants are scored on a zero to 12 scale by a health professional on everyday tasks such as washing, getting dressed and preparing are the Pip and universal credit changes and who is affected?Under the proposed change, people would need to score at least four on one task, ruling out people with lower scores who would previously have qualified for the benefit. The government estimates this will save an additional £4.5bn a year from the welfare bill by the end of the decade. Why is the government trying to cut welfare spending? It is concerned about the rise in the number of people claiming working-age benefits in recent years and the implications of this trend for the public Autumn, the government projected that the numbers of working-age claimants of Pip in England, Scotland and Wales would rise from 2.7 million in 2023-24 to 4.3 million in 2029-30, an increase of 1.6 that time, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government's official forecaster, projected that the overall cost of the working-age benefit system would rise from £48.5bn in 2024 to £75.7bn by would have represented an increase from 1.7% of the size of the UK economy to 2.2%, roughly the size of current spending on defence. Ministers argue that this rising bill needs to be brought under control and that changes to the welfare system are part of that is worth noting though that - even after factoring in the planned cuts - the OBR still projected this bill to continue to rise in cash terms to £72.3bn by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) still projected the total number of working-age Pip recipients to rise by 1.2 million between 2023-24 and 2029-30 - after the cuts. In this sense, the main effect of the Pip cuts would be to reduce the increase in claimants that would otherwise have occurred. What would the impact of the reforms be? The government's official impact assessment estimates that about 250,000 additional people (including 50,000 children) will be left in "relative poverty" (after housing costs) by 2030 because of the that assessment included the impact of the government deciding not to proceed with welfare reforms planned by the previous Conservative administration, which government analysts had judged would have pushed an additional 150,000 people into charities and research organisations have suggested this means the government's 250,000 estimate understates the impact of its own reforms, since the previous administration's reforms were never actually Porter from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has suggested the actual poverty impact of the government's changes could therefore be up to 400,000 (adding the 250,000 figure to the 150,000 figure to generate an estimate of the total numbers affected).However, the government's impact assessment cautions against simply adding the two figures together, noting that "some people are affected by more than one [reform] measure", meaning this approach risks double counting account of this, the Resolution Foundation think tank has estimated that the net effect of the government's reforms would mean "at least 300,000" people entering relative poverty by 2030. What about the impact on employment? The government has claimed that its reforms are not just about saving money, but helping people into Rachel Reeves told Sky News in March 2025 that: "I am absolutely certain that our reforms, instead of pushing people into poverty, are going to get people into work. And we know that if you move from welfare into work, you are much less likely to be in poverty."To this end, the government is gradually increasing the standard allowance in Universal Credit - the basic sum paid to cover recipients' living costs - by £5 a week by is projected to be a net benefit to 3.8 million households and the government argues it will also increase the incentives for people to work rather than claim incapacity government is also investing an extra £1bn a year by 2029-30 in additional support to get people out of inactivity and into employment. What are the rebels' objections? The rebel MPs say disabled people have not been consulted on the proposed also say there has been no evaluation of the overall employment impacts by the is true that the government has not consulted disabled people on the specific cuts to Pip and incapacity benefits, though it is now consulting on the broader reform is also the case that the OBR has not yet done a full employment impact assessment, though the forecaster says it will do one before the Autumn the Resolution Foundation has done its own estimate of the employment impact of the overall reform estimates the total increase in employment could be between 60,000 and 105,000, although it stressed that these figures are highly positive employment figure contrasts with the 800,000 people who are projected to lose part of their Pip payments by 2029-30 and the 3 million people families who will see a cut in their incapacity benefits. What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
The Guardian
15 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Daisy Edgar-Jones to lead new big screen take on Sense and Sensibility
Daisy Edgar-Jones is set to lead a new big screen adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. The actor, who broke out in hit miniseries Normal People, is set to play Elinor in a movie based on the first novel from the author whose 250th birthday is being celebrated by a number of events this year. The 27-year-old teased the news on Instagram in a post of her holding the book. Production is set to begin next month. The film will be directed by Georgia Oakley, who received acclaim for her 80s-set drama Blue Jean which told the story of a lesbian teacher keeping her sexuality under wraps in Thatcher's England. It will also boast Working Title producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner who previously worked together on 2005's Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and 2020's Emma with Anya Taylor-Joy. The story tells of the Dashwood sisters who are in need of financial security and seek it via potential suitors. It was previously turned into an Oscar-winning film in 1995 by Ang Lee with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet starring as well as a BBC series in 2008. The film joins an upcoming Netflix series based on Pride and Prejudice starring Emma Corrin, Jack Lowden and Olivia Colman. Since her role in the romantic drama series based on Sally Rooney's novel, Edgar-Jones has starred in dating thriller Fresh, blockbuster sequel Twisters, a hit adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing and 50s-set queer drama On Swift Horses. She will next be seen opposite Michelle Williams in workplace thriller A Place in Hell from Fair Play writer-director Chloe Dumont.
BBC News
16 minutes ago
- BBC News
Victorian pharmacist's shop sells for almost £17,000 at auction
A Victorian pharmacist's shop has sold for £16,950 at an auction in shop, which dates back to the 1880s, was split into 10 separate lots and sold to a mixture of private collectors and institutions at Cotswold Auction Company in Cirencester on Wednesday.A total of more than 100 items were sold from Darrin Baines' collection of Georgian and Victorian apothecary items, described as one of the largest in the UK."There was lots of interest from people in the room, on the telephone and online bids were very busy - and not just in the UK, but internationally too," said Cotswold Auction Company auctioneer Niall Fry. "There was a good buzz in the room," he Fry said some of the smaller glass items and advertising signs also did well, and seller Darrin Baines was "very pleased" with the results."It's just really fascinating and a privilege to handle [the collection]," added Mr Fry."We get quite a lot of large collections, but to get such niche items in large quantities is quite rare." 'Ceiling fell on us' Mr Baines, a professor of health economics, amassed the sizable collection over the past 25 bought and relocated the Victorian pharmacist's shop to his house in Leominster in Herefordshire from Norfolk."I found [it] in Upwell in the Fens. It had been in the same family for 150 years," he said."I went with a carpenter and a friend and dismantled the shop myself, and when we took one of the really big cabinets out, the ceiling fell on us because it was holding the ceiling up."Mr Baines said he decided to get rid of the collection after selling his house and passion had previously taken up two floors of his home, in what he described as a "museum".
