Full Circle Moment: Hytale Gets Crossplay Support with Minecraft Through an Impressive Modding Proof of Concept
Hytale’s latest community driven milestone feels like the kind of full circle lore that the sandbox genre lives for. A modding effort is now demonstrating crossplay capability between Hytale and Minecraft, not as the same game across different platforms, but as 2 separate standalone titles communicating in a shared multiplayer experience. The work comes from modder iamcxv7 and was highlighted by IGN, which points to this as a rare technical flex that also lands as a narrative callback to Hytale’s origins.
The reason this hits differently is the history attached to it. Long before Hytale became the standalone MMO it is today, its earliest identity was tied to a Minecraft mod era and a creator community that grew around that ecosystem. Now, after years of twists and turns, including studio level changes and a fresh early access runway, the game is looping back to its roots in the most literal way possible by connecting to Minecraft through player made engineering rather than corporate integration.
Bedrock / Pocket <-> @Hytale <-> Java pic.twitter.com/RCBsbRtjd3
— iamcxv7 (@iamcxv711) January 19, 2026
According to iamcxv7, the approach is described as “Packet Trickery,” but the explanation points to a deeper technical reality: a Minecraft server running inside the Hytale JVM, using the Hytale world coordinate system, taking a snapshot of the Hytale world, reconstructing it, and sending it to a Minecraft client via packets. That is a lot more than a simple handshake, and it suggests a bridge that translates world state and player presence across very different runtime expectations.
It's all just Packet Trickery. You could say I am running a Minecraft Server in the Hytale JVM which uses the Coordinate System of the Hytale World (As its the same) As well as takes a Snapshot of the Hytale World and reconstructs it and then send it to to the Client via Packets
— iamcxv7 (@iamcxv711) January 19, 2026
One of the most practical implications is how the mod is expected to be deployed. Because this is positioned as a Hytale mod, the expectation is that Minecraft players would not need to install anything on their side to join friends who are playing through the Hytale environment. The mod would live on the Hytale side and handle the compatibility layer through how it communicates and reconstructs what a Minecraft client needs to see. That said, the mod is not publicly available yet, and iamcxv7 has been clear that it is still early days with significant work remaining. Even so, as a proof of concept, it is already doing the most important thing any ambitious mod can do: proving the concept is possible in the first place.
For the broader ecosystem, this is a reminder that modding communities can create platform shaping moments faster than traditional development pipelines, especially when the goal is experimentation rather than certification. Whether this evolves into a stable, widely used tool or remains an impressive technical demo, it is already a signal that the sandbox community is hungry for cross community play spaces and is willing to build them.
If this mod becomes publicly usable, would you actually try crossplay between Hytale and Minecraft, or do you think it would be better as a technical showcase rather than a daily multiplayer option?
