Histatu · HTU · Histatu Skills
Histatu (HTU) is the top-ranked network in Hytale. The progression system there is called Histatu Skills. It is Endless Leveling: the same suite, built by Airijko across 12 mods and 580,000+ lines of Java, run under an official partner licence that permitted the rename.
They were an official, paying partner. They took the developer credit down on day one, rebuilt the suite as their own in three days (undocumented internals and all) and now market it as built in-house.
Last updated
In short
The rebuild
We gave Histatu seven days’ notice that their partner licence was being revoked. They shipped their own version of the progression system in three.
That speed makes more sense once you know it was not a scramble. By Airijko’s account, the plan to replace him and reproduce the system in-house had already been discussed inside Histatu before the notice period even started. Three days was enough because the work was already underway.
Endless Leveling is 12 mods and 580,000+ lines of Java. The classes and their ascension tiers, the race forms, the augment tiers and their milestone gates, the prestige ladder, the raid gate ranks: building that from nothing is not a three-day job, and it is not a three-month one. We know, because we built it.
Not comparable systems arrived at independently: the same systems, with the same behaviour, down to the same edge cases.
Endless Leveling contains internals that appear in no config file, no page, no documentation and no UI. They cannot be observed from outside the jar, and they cannot be guessed. They are in their build.
The copying was discussed openly. This is not something reconstructed after the fact from suspicion.
Former Histatu staff have acknowledged what Endless Leveling did for that server, and that it would not have got far without it. That is also the reason it had to be reproduced rather than replaced.
You cannot clean-room a system you have never read. Undocumented internals do not survive independent reimplementation: they survive copying. Speed alone would be suspicious; the internals are what make it conclusive.
They were not quiet about it, either. The copy was treated publicly as something to be proud of.
Timeline
Where there is a public artefact, it is linked.
April 4, 2026
Endless Leveling v7.3.2 ships as the “Endless × Histatu Server Event”. The release promotes play.histatu.net directly, in Airijko's own words, as “the greatest server partnered with Endless Leveling”. Histatu holds a paid SSS-tier partner licence: an official Endless Leveling server, permitted to run the suite under its own name.
CurseForge releaseDay one
The developer credit was hidden completely the day after the partnership began, after we had said explicitly that it was to stay on the Support tab. The partner licence permits the rename to “Histatu Skills”. It does not permit removing the author.
Airijko's accountThe response
Endless Leveling now ships an integrity check that verifies the Support tab still carries its developer credit and alerts players when it has been altered. The tab is locked against every addon, official partners included. That system exists because of this.
Before the end
Histatu was already discussing replacing us and rebuilding the system in-house while the partnership was still active, not after it ended. Finding that out is what forced the decision to leave suddenly rather than wind down on our own timeline. It is also why we then priced continuing at more than three times what we had been paid: a correction, not a threat, after months of being paid less than other developers on the project while carrying more of that network's growth than any of them.
Airijko's accountSeven days
We gave Histatu seven days' notice that their partner licence was being revoked, once the decision was made: time to wind down cleanly. They did not need it.
Three days
Histatu shipped their own version of the progression system in three days, inside the notice period, with features reproduced one to one and undocumented behaviour that exists in no config, no page and no public document travelling with them. There are public messages about the copying.
August 2026
Histatu's server listing (ranked #1, with over 23,000 all-time votes) advertises “an in-house RPG progression system”, “built and maintained entirely in-house by our development team”.
Their listingRecently
Hytale's own team removed Histatu from Official Discovery, while they were still the #1 server by a wide margin, out-populating the second through fifth largest servers combined. Hytale has not published a reason, and we are not going to invent one for them. What is on the record about that server is on this page.
Licence
Endless Leveling ships under the Airijko Proprietary License, included in every copy of the mod. It is deliberately generous about running the suite: any server may, for free, and official partners may do so under their own name. What it reserves is the source, redistribution, and authorship.
A partner licence permits running the suite under the partner's own branding: “Histatu Skills” rather than “Endless Leveling”. Authorship is not part of what transfers.
§3: Strict Prohibitions
Claiming ownership, authorship, or affiliation with Airijko
No addon may alter the Support tab: official partners explicitly included. The developer credit on it is pinned to an exact value and checked at runtime.
§3: Strict Prohibitions
Creating modified versions or derivative works
Endless Leveling ships closed-source. The undocumented internals that turned up in their rebuild are reachable only by decompiling it.
§3: Strict Prohibitions
Accessing, viewing, or attempting to obtain the source code · Decompiling, reverse engineering, disassembling, or deobfuscating the Mod
Revocation under §7 is automatic rather than something that has to be served or announced: a violation ends the right to run the mod at the moment it happens.
Why we ended it
Histatu sells loot boxes. Randomised rewards, bought with real money, on a server whose playerbase skews young. The word they use for it is a crate. The mechanic is gambling, and it is not a side stall on that server: it is the centre of how the place makes money. Sold next to it is progression bought outright for cash, so a player who spends outscales a player who plays. That is not a side effect of our systems. It is what happens when you sell around them. We did not want Endless Leveling attached to it, and we said so.
We were not the first to say it, and we were not saying it alone. Ask around the part of the Hytale community that follows server news and the same account comes back, blunter than we would put it: a pay to win cash grab with gambling at the centre of it, aimed at children’s wallets; a staff culture that turned toxic, with the owner in the middle of it rather than above it; other people’s mods run with the credits stripped off.
And when a rival server started pulling attention, its listing would take a wave of downvotes and one star reviews, while Histatu’s own listing filled with glowing comments from accounts that were not players. Bury the competition, inflate yourself, stay at the top of the list. None of that is a reading we invented to justify walking away. It was the community’s reading first. We are one more entry in it.
Here is the part that is bigger than one mod team and one falling out. For most of this year, Histatu was the first thing a lot of people saw of Hytale multiplayer. For plenty of players it was the only thing they saw. So when the biggest server on the game runs on gambling money, strips the credits off other people’s work, and goes after the servers competing with it, that is not just one bad server. That is the impression the whole game gets. A player who gets burned there does not walk away thinking that one server was rotten. They walk away thinking Hytale servers are like that, and they go play something else. The people who pay for that are the small servers doing it honestly, the modders, and Hytale itself.
Hytale removed Histatu from Official Discovery and published no reason, and we are not going to invent one. What we can report is the reaction: almost nobody who had been following the server was surprised.
The harassment started before any of this was public. It was never all of them: some of the staff, some of the other developers, and the part of the playerbase that took their lead from them. That was enough.
What actually forced the decision was finding out they were already discussing replacing me. Not as a reaction to anything I did, and not after the partnership had ended: while it was still active. That is the part that gets lost in how this looks from outside, where it reads like I walked away and they moved on afterward. What happened is I found out I was being planned around, and I left suddenly because of it. Giving seven days’ notice afterward was the professional part; the decision itself happened the moment I found out.
For months before that I said nothing about the pay, even though I knew what the server was pulling in every week and knew other developers on the project were being paid more than I was while I was the one building the core of it, with more impact on that network’s growth than any of them. I never raised it. I was there because it was fun, and I was open about that from the start. Once I knew I was being replaced anyway, that stopped being the arrangement, so I put a real number on the table: more than three times what I had been paid. That was not a threat, it was a correction. People inside Histatu and people just watching from the outside said the same thing once they saw it: I had been underpaid the whole time.
None of that came with any goodwill in return. I advertised that server and built extra content for it that nobody asked me for, because I wanted Histatu to be the best server in the game and pushed harder for that than anyone on their own staff did. What I got back was the blame for their decisions: every unpopular call the server made, I was the name players heard attached to it. They shipped their own bad decisions and told their players Endless Leveling was the cause.
- Airijko
The same systems run on our own server, balanced, with nothing sold that changes the outcome of a fight. That is what Endless Leveling is supposed to feel like.
After
With the entire system in hand, they still fell behind on updates. That is the part worth sitting with: what they took was a snapshot. What they could not take was the two people who keep building it. Their player count has been falling since.
Their community worked it out before we said anything. A majority of Histatu’s core players are on Endless Leveling now, and so are their staff, including senior ones. We are not going to name them. They came here to play, not to be used as evidence.
We have said almost nothing this entire time. One Reddit post. One message in Discord. We have never looked at their server, never organised anything against them, and never botted a comment anywhere. They are still running, and the only reason is that nothing has cost them anything yet.
That is what this page is for.
The system itself
A Hytale network does not reach the top of the server lists on a world border and a shop. It gets there on a reason to log in tomorrow. On Histatu, that reason is Endless Leveling, so here is what it is.
20
classes
Each with 5 ascension tiers: 100 definitions in total.
12
races
72 forms, unlocked by ascension at prestige 5, 10 and 20.
18
raid packs
Gate ranks E through S, with S announced server-wide.
∞
prestige
Level cap 50, +10 per prestige, and prestige itself never caps.
Underneath that: 12 interlocking mods, 580,000+ lines of Java, 227 registered commands and 6,113 translation keys across 12 locales. It is configurable down to the JSON, which is what lets a partner server make it feel native to their world and what the partner licence is for.
Where this goes
Endless Leveling is two people. We do not have the money for a legal team, and we are not going to spend years and a fortune we do not have taking this through courts. That is the honest reason there is no lawsuit, not that there is nothing to answer for.
So this page is the record instead. It is here, it is sourced, and it is not going anywhere.
What we are doing with the time: keeping the public mods updated, giving content to the servers that ask for it, and submitting our optimisations upstream to Hytale itself. If Hytale is stable, every server wins, and Hytale wins most of all.
FAQ
Histatu Skills is Endless Leveling, renamed. Histatu holds an official partner licence for the Endless Leveling suite, which permits running it under their own branding. The systems underneath (levels, classes, races, augments, prestige, raids) are Airijko's.
Histatu (HTU) still ranks #1 on the public Hytale server lists, with over 23,000 all-time votes, but it has been delisted from Hytale's Official Discovery and its player count has been falling. The RPG progression system it became known for is Endless Leveling, built by Airijko, and a majority of its core players, along with its staff, have since moved to Endless Leveling.
Histatu ran the suite as an official partner server on a paid SSS-tier licence, and the two ran a credited joint event together in April 2026. That licence permits the rename to Histatu Skills. It does not permit removing the creator's credit, rebuilding the suite from copied internals, or presenting the result as in-house work.
Yes. Histatu rebuilt the progression system in three days, with features reproduced one to one and undocumented internals (behaviour that appears in no config, page or public document and cannot be observed from outside the jar) carried across with them. Undocumented internals do not survive an independent reimplementation; they survive copying. There are public messages about it.
Yes. The developer credit was hidden completely the day after the partnership began, after we had said explicitly that it was to stay on the Support tab. Endless Leveling now ships an integrity check that verifies that credit and alerts players when it has been altered: a system built in response to this.
By Airijko's account, Histatu was already discussing replacing him and rebuilding the progression system in-house while the partnership was still active, not after it ended. Finding that out is what forced him to leave suddenly rather than wind down on his own timeline. He had also been paid less than other developers on the project for months despite building its core and driving more of the network's growth than any of them, something he never raised until he learned he was being replaced anyway, at which point he priced continuing at more than three times his previous rate. Harassment from parts of the staff, other developers and the playerbase following their lead compounded it.
Hytale's team removed Histatu from Official Discovery while it was still the #1 server by a wide margin, out-populating the second through fifth largest servers combined. Hytale has not published a reason. What is on the public record about that server includes copying Endless Leveling, real-money loot boxes sold to a playerbase that skews young, vote and comment bombing aimed at other servers’ listings, and repeated complaints about the conduct of staff members and of the owner himself.
Histatu sells loot boxes (randomised rewards bought with real money, which is gambling in everything but the label) alongside progression advantages sold outright for cash, to a playerbase that skews young. Those advantages change the balance of the systems underneath, so a player who spends outscales a player who plays. Declining to attach Endless Leveling to that model is part of why the partnership ended.
Endless Leveling is a two-developer project without the funds for a legal team, and pursuing this through courts would cost years and money we do not have. That is the reason, and it is not evidence that there is nothing to answer for. The public record is the response we can afford.
Yes, and for free. Server operators may run Endless Leveling for gameplay at no cost. What the licence reserves is the source, the right to redistribute, and authorship: every installation must come directly from Airijko's official releases rather than being copied, bundled or modified.
play.endlessleveling.net: the official server, run by the mod's author, and the only place the full suite including the server-exclusive Endless Skills combat system is playable.
Play the original
The official server runs the complete suite, including Endless Skills, the combat system exclusive to it and available nowhere else.
