With the holiday season, things have been a bit quiet in Hytale land lately. Rest assured though, the Hyfable team has been hard at work the last few weeks. With only 18 days until release, Hytale is looking to smash records on release day!

Since our last post, we have gained over 160 users on the website, 270 members on the discord server, and reached 475 followers on X! These are impressive numbers for a new gaming community, and it speaks to the incredible excitement around Hytale!

Hyfable Development

Recently we have acquired high-end server hardware which will enable us to host hundreds of players across several Hytale worlds. Our server is located in one of the best data centers and cloud providers available. We thought it was important to get the best hardware available and do so early, even if it means spending more money.

We expect huge demand at top-tier data centers the closer Hytale gets to release, especially considering that RAM is in such short supply right now. We want to have plenty of capacity for everyone to enjoy Hytale with the best-lag free performance.

We've also begun planning out server mods to both enhance the player experience in Hyfable and enable new custom gamemodes. This isn't easy, as the Hytale API is not available yet, but having some scaffolding in place will make it that much easier to develop new gamemodes on release. I personally developed plugins for years on Minecraft and along with our 2 developers, I expect us to hit the ground running once the server software releases.

We have a new Head of Community Operations, xladylinzx! She is quite experienced with leading large communities like this one and will be a great asset to our team. She is working hard to shore up our community guidelines and documentation as well as onboard moderators in preparation for launch. Please see the join-our-team channel in discord if you are interested in becoming a moderator for Hyfable!

AI in Gaming and Art

This week there was a serious discussion on X about the use of AI. Hytale's art director spoke out against it, and many players voiced that they do not want AI generated content of any kind in their gaming and art. For a non-artist like myself, it's easy to understand that AI art is tacky and distasteful in most cases and shouldn't be centered in any serious art works. But I actually learned that many artists and fans consider AI to be unethical and using it at all is equal to theft. This is an interesting line of thought and certainly casts AI in a new light. With that in mind, Hyfable will only use human made imagery, music and other assets in our servers and community hubs.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to Hyfable, and thank you for being present and engaged. Your contributions, presence and positivity will go a long way in making Hyfable the best place to begin this exciting new adventure! Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you all in Orbis very soon!