Hytale Copycat Game on Nintendo eShop Lands Hypixel Studios in Legal Battle

If you spotted a game called Hytale: Sandbox RPG on the Nintendo eShop recently and thought Hypixel Studios had quietly launched a Switch port, stop. It hasn't. What you're looking at is a blatant copycat title from developer RoVi Ninen, a studio with no connection to Hypixel Studios whatsoever.

The fake listing appeared on the North American Nintendo eShop on April 10, and it's about as shameless as these things get. The box art closely mirrors Hytale's actual key visual, the title lifts the game's name almost wholesale, and the whole thing is clearly designed to fool Switch owners who aren't paying close enough attention. Hypixel Studios CEO Simon Collins-Laflamme confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that the situation is being handled by the studio's legal team, though he didn't go into further detail beyond that.

The real Hytale launched into early access on January 13, 2026, and is only available on Windows, macOS, and Linux PCs at $19.99 for the standard edition. There are no announced plans for console ports at this time. Console releases have been described as "post-launch" by the team, with no specific date attached. In other words, if Hytale ever does land on Switch, you'll hear about it.

RoVi Ninen's knock-off is currently priced at $4.99 as a limited discount, up from a regular price of $7.99, running until April 24. Independent reports from those who purchased it describe a bare-bones Minecraft clone built from generic Unity asset store packs, with little to no original work to speak of. It has not charted on Nintendo's best-selling games list.

This is not the first time RoVi Ninen has pulled this kind of thing. The same developer released Mage Battle Arena on the Switch eShop in January 2026, a title that bears a striking resemblance to the indie game Mage Arena. They also put out Coin Pit in March, a copycat of Panik Arcade's coin-based indie title CloverPit, which had its own dedicated player base. Panik Arcade had actually warned players twice about RoVi Ninen's knock-off, once when Coin Pit launched on iOS in September 2025, and again when it resurfaced on the Nintendo eShop in January 2026. Coin Pit has since been removed from the eShop, but Hytale: Sandbox RPG and Mage Battle Arena were both still listed as of April 14 at the time of writing.

The fact that these listings keep passing through Nintendo's submission process has frustrated plenty of people online. Nintendo rolled out a change ahead of the Switch 2 launch that reranked popular games by dollar sales rather than units sold, partly to address cheap shovelware and knock-offs floating to the top of the storefront. That change sparked its own controversy, as it made it harder for legitimate low-cost indie games to get visibility, yet titles like this still seem to slip through.

As for the real Hytale, things are going considerably better. The game has been one of the standout early access releases of 2026 so far, shipping four major updates across its first quarter, reaching 20 million mod downloads on CurseForge, and running a $100,000 modding contest in partnership with CurseForge. Update 4, which dropped on March 26, was described as the most substantial content release since launch, adding proximity voice chat alongside other new features. Update 5 is currently in pre-release testing. Friend lists and server discovery are among the features in active development.

If you want the real thing, it's only at hytale.com for PC.