There’s a lot of ways to hire more devs for your game studio. Sometimes, you put up a listing on a job site, like a normal person. Even a simple ‘we’re hiring!’ sign outside an office window can draw in traffic.
Other times, you can concoct a whole scheme designed to make ideal candidates reveal themselves to you first, Cicada 3301 style. Apparently, that’s the route Hytale prefers.
“I want to explain clearly why we’re pushing modding so hard in Hytale,” Simon Collins-Laflamme, the founder of Hypixel, writes on X. “It’s not because we expect modders to carry the game for us. It’s because I believe the modding community is going to be one of the foundations for where we take Hytale next.”
He continues, saying: “Over the last few months, most of the people we’ve brought onto the team (now over 70) have been people we already knew, respected, and saw building amazing things, especially in the modding community.”
“We hire from the community.”
But this isn’t just a way to find people who know how to work within the bounds of Hytale. It’s about finding the right sort of person, fostering a “culture” of people who’ll work on the game in a certain way.
“Everyone here is expected to touch the game. Even people in leadership. Even me,” Collins-Laflamme writes. “If I see something wrong, I either fix it or make sure it gets worked on. That’s the culture I want around Hytale: close to the work, close to the game, close to the community.”
Hytale Supports Mod Devs With a $100,000 Prize Pool
This message came to us in the wake of a modding contest, shared by Hytale’s leadership. Boasting a $100,000 prize pool, the contest also aims to feature a visual node editor for Hytale’s world generation systems, allowing those with zero coding knowledge to flex their creative muscles.
Editors like that obviously take up a portion of dev time, and it’s not the only investment Hytale has made into making itself accessible to modders. “Building for modding makes development harder,” Collins-Laflamme wrote, adding: “I believe it pays off in a big way later, because every good system we build can become a hundred great creations from the community.”
“When someone in the community makes something exceptional, that creates a real bridge. Maybe we can collaborate. Maybe we can learn from it. Maybe we hire them.”
One question that developers are often asked is that, if someone mods a cool feature into a game, what’s stopping the devs from making it official? Hire the talent, add the feature, and the players get a much cooler experience out of it. Hytale has, apparently, taken those sentiments to heart.
“If somebody makes an incredible fishing mod before we’ve even tackled fishing ourselves, I don’t see that as a threat,” Collins-Laflamme continues. “I see talent. I see proof that the ecosystem is working.”
Hytale’s policy here doesn’t seem to be one they’ll ditch anytime soon. It’s not something that most studios do – but if successful, they could tempt the rest of the industry into following their footsteps.
