A brazen copycat has forced the developers of Hytale to dust off their legal team. Within days of a cloned game hitting Nintendo's eShop under the name Hytale: Sandbox RPG, Hypixel Studios founder Simon Collins-Laflamme confirmed the studio is fighting back through proper channels.
The offending title borrows far more than just the original game's name. The knockoff features nearly identical artwork, promotional imagery, and visual design that mirror Hytale so closely that at least one confused buyer thought they were witnessing a surprise Switch release of the real thing.
Collins-Laflamme kept his response succinct when asked about the infringing game, tweeting simply: "Yeah, it's being handled by the legal team."
The clone appears to have come from developers previously responsible for Coin Pit, itself flagged as a low-effort knockoff of Clover Pit. This history suggests a pattern of opportunistic design rather than coincidence.
The incident has sparked frustration among gamers about Nintendo's eShop vetting process. One Reddit commenter noted the marketplace remains "littered with knock-off games" despite the platform holder's stated commitments to cracking down on fraudulent titles. Another player who recently purchased a Switch 2 said they nearly fell for the fake, initially wondering why the legitimate Hytale would debut on Switch before PC.
Hytale is far from alone in facing this problem. The sandbox RPG market has drawn particular attention from pirates and counterfeiters, but the issue spans all hit franchises. Last year, The Pokemon Company won substantial damages against a Chinese mobile game called Pocket Monster: Remake, which had used unaltered artwork from Pokemon Yellow as its app icon and featured unmistakable likenesses of Ash Ketchum, Pikachu, and other canonical characters in its branding.
The legitimate Hytale currently exists only in early access on PC, available exclusively through its official website. The game marries sandbox freedom with RPG progression, letting players explore procedurally generated worlds filled with dungeons and creatures before reshaping the landscape block by block. Early reviews have praised its thoughtful evolution of the block-building formula, balancing familiarity with fresh mechanics that give it room to develop.
Author Emily Chen: "Nintendo needs to actually enforce its own store standards, because right now the eShop is basically open season for scammers targeting confused players."
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