'What the f***': Modding arch-sorcerer casually invents Minecraft x Hytale crossplay, defies laws of god and man alike
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Even at a casual glance, it's not hard to see the similarities between Minecraft and Hytale, its latest block-based sandbox competitor. As Hytale's early modding scene flourishes, one modder is taking those similarities to their logical endpoint, deciding that if the games overlap so neatly, Minecraft and Hytale players might as well just play together on the same server.
It might sound like black magic, but that didn't prevent modder Sadat Sahib from demonstrating the fruits of his forbidden arts. On Reddit, Sahib posted screenshots of a functioning prototype of Minecraft and Hytale crossplay, casually explaining that he "made Bedrock <-> Hytale <-> Java cross-play possible!"
1 minute of Gameplay Footage! (W.I.P.) pic.twitter.com/Ca6fhcENNtJanuary 19, 2026
"what the fuck," said one redditor. The reply is, by far, the post's highest-rated response.
Not content with immediately baffling an entire community of Hytale players, Sahib then went to X, where he shared a minute-long demo of his work-in-progress crossplay mod. In the video, Sahib has Minecraft and Hytale clients running in windows beside each other, with the same geometry represented in each game's respective blocks and art style. As Sahib moves in the Minecraft client, a player character in the Hytale session mimics those movements. Sahib then tabs over to Hytale, where his movements—and even block placements—are then similarly mirrored in the Minecraft session.
As Sahib explained in replies on Reddit and X, Hytale is serving as the host for the crossplay session, and while block placements are translated to equivalent blocks on the Minecraft side, it seems like only the prototype's Hytale player is capable of placing new blocks. Considering he's handbuilding a bridge between two different games with their own systems and mechanics, it's not surprising that Sahib says "currently many things are Broken."
It's unclear whether Sahib will ever release the crossplay mod for public consumption as he says it's "more of a proof of concept," but he intends to "update it for a good while" to see how much shared functionality he's able to implement. The first big item on his list is to solve shared world generation, as the Minecraft crossplay client is currently limited to loading its immediate surroundings from the Hytale side.
Terrifyingly, Sahib has already made some substantial headway since posting his first look at the crossplay mod. In less than a day, he's uploaded additional demonstration videos to show that he's also added functional cross-game chat, animation synchronization, and combat.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Sahib's growing power represents a threat to software stability everywhere, but I salute his efforts nonetheless.
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This could be quite bad if Microsoft decides to sue over similarities.
-
Even at a casual glance, it's not hard to see the similarities between Minecraft and Hytale, its latest block-based sandbox competitor. As Hytale's early modding scene flourishes, one modder is taking those similarities to their logical endpoint, deciding that if the games overlap so neatly, Minecraft and Hytale players might as well just play together on the same server.
It might sound like black magic, but that didn't prevent modder Sadat Sahib from demonstrating the fruits of his forbidden arts. On Reddit, Sahib posted screenshots of a functioning prototype of Minecraft and Hytale crossplay, casually explaining that he "made Bedrock <-> Hytale <-> Java cross-play possible!"
1 minute of Gameplay Footage! (W.I.P.) pic.twitter.com/Ca6fhcENNtJanuary 19, 2026
"what the fuck," said one redditor. The reply is, by far, the post's highest-rated response.
Not content with immediately baffling an entire community of Hytale players, Sahib then went to X, where he shared a minute-long demo of his work-in-progress crossplay mod. In the video, Sahib has Minecraft and Hytale clients running in windows beside each other, with the same geometry represented in each game's respective blocks and art style. As Sahib moves in the Minecraft client, a player character in the Hytale session mimics those movements. Sahib then tabs over to Hytale, where his movements—and even block placements—are then similarly mirrored in the Minecraft session.
As Sahib explained in replies on Reddit and X, Hytale is serving as the host for the crossplay session, and while block placements are translated to equivalent blocks on the Minecraft side, it seems like only the prototype's Hytale player is capable of placing new blocks. Considering he's handbuilding a bridge between two different games with their own systems and mechanics, it's not surprising that Sahib says "currently many things are Broken."
It's unclear whether Sahib will ever release the crossplay mod for public consumption as he says it's "more of a proof of concept," but he intends to "update it for a good while" to see how much shared functionality he's able to implement. The first big item on his list is to solve shared world generation, as the Minecraft crossplay client is currently limited to loading its immediate surroundings from the Hytale side.
Terrifyingly, Sahib has already made some substantial headway since posting his first look at the crossplay mod. In less than a day, he's uploaded additional demonstration videos to show that he's also added functional cross-game chat, animation synchronization, and combat.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Sahib's growing power represents a threat to software stability everywhere, but I salute his efforts nonetheless.
2026 games: All the upcoming gamesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together
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Does this mean Hytale shares some code with Minecraft? If so this could be bad
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Does this mean Hytale shares some code with Minecraft? If so this could be bad
There's no reason to suspect that.
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Does this mean Hytale shares some code with Minecraft? If so this could be bad
Nah it's just that they have blocks of the same size. It probably synchronizes terrain using analogous block types where possible, and player position. Basically it has to convert everything into something similar.
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Does this mean Hytale shares some code with Minecraft? If so this could be bad
I doubt it. Hytale was built for modding and Minecraft has an extensive modding community with tons of netplay experience. This guy just wrote a translation layer between the two (not to diminish his efforts at all, it’s freaking awesome).
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Does this mean Hytale shares some code with Minecraft? If so this could be bad
Probably not. This is more akin to using different apps to access the same service, like one person using Ivory and the other using Tusky to access Mastodon. Multiple clients accessing the same API endpoints is kind of how the internet operates, or at least was before big tech decided to shut out third-party apps.
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Does this mean Hytale shares some code with Minecraft? If so this could be bad
As Sahib explained in replies on Reddit and X, Hytale is serving as the host for the crossplay session, and while block placements are translated to equivalent blocks on the Minecraft side, it seems like only the prototype's Hytale player is capable of placing new blocks. Considering he's handbuilding a bridge between two different games with their own systems and mechanics, it's not surprising that Sahib says "currently many things are Broken."
Based on this, it sounds like the Hytale server is providing map data to the Minecraft session, which is why the block placement works on the Hytale side but not the Minecraft side. He must have created some kind of translation table for block types between the engines.
-
Even at a casual glance, it's not hard to see the similarities between Minecraft and Hytale, its latest block-based sandbox competitor. As Hytale's early modding scene flourishes, one modder is taking those similarities to their logical endpoint, deciding that if the games overlap so neatly, Minecraft and Hytale players might as well just play together on the same server.
It might sound like black magic, but that didn't prevent modder Sadat Sahib from demonstrating the fruits of his forbidden arts. On Reddit, Sahib posted screenshots of a functioning prototype of Minecraft and Hytale crossplay, casually explaining that he "made Bedrock <-> Hytale <-> Java cross-play possible!"
1 minute of Gameplay Footage! (W.I.P.) pic.twitter.com/Ca6fhcENNtJanuary 19, 2026
"what the fuck," said one redditor. The reply is, by far, the post's highest-rated response.
Not content with immediately baffling an entire community of Hytale players, Sahib then went to X, where he shared a minute-long demo of his work-in-progress crossplay mod. In the video, Sahib has Minecraft and Hytale clients running in windows beside each other, with the same geometry represented in each game's respective blocks and art style. As Sahib moves in the Minecraft client, a player character in the Hytale session mimics those movements. Sahib then tabs over to Hytale, where his movements—and even block placements—are then similarly mirrored in the Minecraft session.
As Sahib explained in replies on Reddit and X, Hytale is serving as the host for the crossplay session, and while block placements are translated to equivalent blocks on the Minecraft side, it seems like only the prototype's Hytale player is capable of placing new blocks. Considering he's handbuilding a bridge between two different games with their own systems and mechanics, it's not surprising that Sahib says "currently many things are Broken."
It's unclear whether Sahib will ever release the crossplay mod for public consumption as he says it's "more of a proof of concept," but he intends to "update it for a good while" to see how much shared functionality he's able to implement. The first big item on his list is to solve shared world generation, as the Minecraft crossplay client is currently limited to loading its immediate surroundings from the Hytale side.
Terrifyingly, Sahib has already made some substantial headway since posting his first look at the crossplay mod. In less than a day, he's uploaded additional demonstration videos to show that he's also added functional cross-game chat, animation synchronization, and combat.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Sahib's growing power represents a threat to software stability everywhere, but I salute his efforts nonetheless.
2026 games: All the upcoming gamesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together
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It's one of those "reporting on social media without actually adding anything" articles, but in this case it's pretty cool.
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Does this mean Hytale shares some code with Minecraft? If so this could be bad
Hytale is as different from minecraft, as java different to bedrock. I guess its just a translation layer, which allows changing identical blocks and running identical functions between each other. But of course there might be many things which hytale does different compared to both, java and bedrock, and the game itself released just a week ago, so for now, as the modder said, its very buggy and many features missing.
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Nah it's just that they have blocks of the same size. It probably synchronizes terrain using analogous block types where possible, and player position. Basically it has to convert everything into something similar.
Yeah, makes me wanna say “Translation, not emulation.”
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Probably not. This is more akin to using different apps to access the same service, like one person using Ivory and the other using Tusky to access Mastodon. Multiple clients accessing the same API endpoints is kind of how the internet operates, or at least was before big tech decided to shut out third-party apps.
These aren't the same service is the thing though. To try to keep the analogy, this feels more akin to someone posting a Twitter screenshot on Reddit
-
Even at a casual glance, it's not hard to see the similarities between Minecraft and Hytale, its latest block-based sandbox competitor. As Hytale's early modding scene flourishes, one modder is taking those similarities to their logical endpoint, deciding that if the games overlap so neatly, Minecraft and Hytale players might as well just play together on the same server.
It might sound like black magic, but that didn't prevent modder Sadat Sahib from demonstrating the fruits of his forbidden arts. On Reddit, Sahib posted screenshots of a functioning prototype of Minecraft and Hytale crossplay, casually explaining that he "made Bedrock <-> Hytale <-> Java cross-play possible!"
1 minute of Gameplay Footage! (W.I.P.) pic.twitter.com/Ca6fhcENNtJanuary 19, 2026
"what the fuck," said one redditor. The reply is, by far, the post's highest-rated response.
Not content with immediately baffling an entire community of Hytale players, Sahib then went to X, where he shared a minute-long demo of his work-in-progress crossplay mod. In the video, Sahib has Minecraft and Hytale clients running in windows beside each other, with the same geometry represented in each game's respective blocks and art style. As Sahib moves in the Minecraft client, a player character in the Hytale session mimics those movements. Sahib then tabs over to Hytale, where his movements—and even block placements—are then similarly mirrored in the Minecraft session.
As Sahib explained in replies on Reddit and X, Hytale is serving as the host for the crossplay session, and while block placements are translated to equivalent blocks on the Minecraft side, it seems like only the prototype's Hytale player is capable of placing new blocks. Considering he's handbuilding a bridge between two different games with their own systems and mechanics, it's not surprising that Sahib says "currently many things are Broken."
It's unclear whether Sahib will ever release the crossplay mod for public consumption as he says it's "more of a proof of concept," but he intends to "update it for a good while" to see how much shared functionality he's able to implement. The first big item on his list is to solve shared world generation, as the Minecraft crossplay client is currently limited to loading its immediate surroundings from the Hytale side.
Terrifyingly, Sahib has already made some substantial headway since posting his first look at the crossplay mod. In less than a day, he's uploaded additional demonstration videos to show that he's also added functional cross-game chat, animation synchronization, and combat.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Sahib's growing power represents a threat to software stability everywhere, but I salute his efforts nonetheless.
2026 games: All the upcoming gamesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together
From PCGamer latest via this RSS feed
This isn't that hard to do. And it won't work nearly as well as most people would think.
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Lmao what a useless comment right here
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These aren't the same service is the thing though. To try to keep the analogy, this feels more akin to someone posting a Twitter screenshot on Reddit
In this case, the service is the same thing. Both the Minecraft client and the Hytale client are connecting to a Hytale server. So I guess you could say it's like if Lemmy had an official app, and you used that and the Boost app to connect to a Lemmy backend: the hypothetical Lemmy app would be the Hytale client, connecting the way it's meant to to the service it was designed for; and the Boost app would be the Minecraft client, designed to connect to a different type of server but modified to work because the workloads are similar enough that they can be translated pretty simply.
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It adds nothing to the conversation
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Does this mean Hytale shares some code with Minecraft? If so this could be bad
Hytale is essentially modded minecraft. Doesn‘t mean it shares the exact same code or engine but damn it‘s modded Minecraft.
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This could be quite bad if Microsoft decides to sue over similarities.
Technically you could do this with any two games, it's just a matter of how you map the representation of one game within the other. And afaik, every important mechanic in mc was done elsewhere first, mc just put it all together in one sandbox.
The only grounds msft has to sue on would be assets and likenesses, which hytale doesn't (shouldn't) use any of.
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Technically you could do this with any two games, it's just a matter of how you map the representation of one game within the other. And afaik, every important mechanic in mc was done elsewhere first, mc just put it all together in one sandbox.
The only grounds msft has to sue on would be assets and likenesses, which hytale doesn't (shouldn't) use any of.
I'm sure it helps a lot that these are games with player hostable servers
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I'm sure it helps a lot that these are games with player hostable servers
Yeah, and that they have official modding support, but the absence of either has never stopped modding communities in the past.
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It's one of those "reporting on social media without actually adding anything" articles, but in this case it's pretty cool.
Hijacking this comment to mention the original link: https://hytale2mc.com/
