Hytale Reworks Player-Hosted Multiplayer with ICE, STUN and TURN

Joining a friend's Hytale world should become much easier, even when routers and NAT configurations previously made a direct connection impossible. Hypixel Studios has replaced Hytale's legacy hole-punching system for player-hosted sessions with a more robust combination of ICE, STUN and TURN.

The networking change arrived on August 22, 2026 with Hotfix 1 for Part 13 of the Update 6 Pre-Release. According to Hypixel Studios, many players who previously needed external networking tools such as Tailscale should now be able to connect to their friends directly from Hytale.

Hytale replaces its legacy connection system

Until this hotfix, joining a world hosted directly by another player relied on Hytale's previous hole-punching implementation. This works on many home networks, but NAT behaviour can make peer-to-peer communication difficult or completely prevent two players from reaching each other.

Hypixel Studios is now using ICE, or Interactive Connectivity Establishment, following RFC 8445. Instead of relying on a single connection method, ICE can gather several possible network routes and test which one can successfully connect the two players.

If a direct route is available, Hytale can use it. If it is not, the game can now attempt to establish the connection through a TURN relay server.

This is a major quality-of-life improvement for casual multiplayer because the networking complexity is handled by the game instead of being pushed onto the player.

What do ICE, STUN and TURN actually do?

The three names may sound highly technical, but they solve different parts of the same problem: allowing two devices behind routers and NAT systems to communicate reliably over the Internet.

STUN helps discover how the Internet sees your connection

A computer inside a home network usually has a private IP address that cannot be contacted directly from the public Internet. The router performs Network Address Translation, or NAT, between that private network and the public connection.

STUN can help an application discover the public-facing IP address and port allocated by the NAT. It can also be used as part of connectivity checks between endpoints.

ICE searches for a working route

ICE brings the different possibilities together. Each side can gather several network candidates, including local addresses, addresses discovered through STUN and relay addresses provided through TURN.

The candidates are then tested to find a working pair. In simple terms, Hytale no longer has to assume that one connection technique will work for every router or Internet provider.

TURN provides the fallback when direct communication fails

Sometimes the two players still cannot communicate directly. That is where TURN becomes important.

A TURN server acts as an intermediate relay between the two endpoints. Instead of Player A communicating directly with Player B, traffic can pass through an accessible relay that forwards packets between them.

Why did some Hytale players need Tailscale before?

Tools such as Tailscale create a virtual network between devices over the Internet. For players unable to establish a normal direct Hytale connection because of their NAT configuration, this could provide an alternative way to make both computers behave as if they were reachable through the same private network.

That solution works, but it adds extra steps: everyone has to install another application, join the same virtual network and potentially troubleshoot the networking layer before playing.

Hypixel Studios now explicitly says that players affected by NAT-related connection problems should no longer need tools like Tailscale in many cases.

For a simple evening with friends, that is arguably the most important part of this hotfix. Hosting a world should increasingly become a case of inviting someone and playing rather than configuring an external networking utility first.

There are still two important limitations

The new system considerably expands the number of network configurations Hytale can handle, but Hypixel Studios has already documented cases where it can still fail.

Double NAT is not supported yet

The current implementation still cannot handle double NAT configurations. This occurs when a connection passes through two successive layers of Network Address Translation rather than one.

Hypixel Studios says it hopes to provide a solution during the Update 7 pre-releases.

The Hytale TURN relay currently requires UDP

There is another important technical restriction: Hytale's TURN relay currently uses UDP only.

If a network blocks UDP relay traffic, the TURN fallback cannot be used. This can matter on particularly restrictive corporate, school, public or managed networks.

Does this make dedicated Hytale servers less useful?

Not really, because the new system solves a different problem.

ICE, STUN and TURN are primarily aimed at player-hosted worlds: one player starts a world on their own computer and friends need a reliable way to reach it through the Internet.

That is ideal for temporary sessions between a small group of friends. But the host's computer still needs to run the world, remain online and provide the resources required by the session.

A dedicated server is designed around a different use case: a world that should remain available independently of a player's PC.

The important distinction is therefore not simply connection quality. Hytale is making casual hosting more accessible, while dedicated hosting remains relevant when the world itself needs to exist independently of whoever happens to be playing.

The hotfix also improves server stability and diagnostics

The networking overhaul is the headline feature of the August 22 hotfix, but several smaller changes are also relevant to multiplayer and server administrators.

Hypixel Studios fixed a crash that could occur when joining a world or server running several large skin mods simultaneously. Textures that exceed the available texture atlas are now skipped and recorded as a warning instead of crashing the client during the join process.

Server shutdown behaviour has also been improved. When a server stops, connected players now receive a clean disconnect instead of remaining connected until their connection eventually times out.

Switching a shared world back to private should now take effect immediately as well.

For developers and server tooling, now exposes optional wire-byte counters through default methods. Existing implementations do not require changes, but developers can use the new counters to gain more visibility into network traffic.

A small hotfix with a major multiplayer consequence

On paper, Hotfix 1 for Update 6 Part 13 contains only a handful of changes. From a multiplayer perspective, however, the migration to ICE, STUN and TURN is one of the more significant networking changes Hytale has received.

It removes a technical barrier that ordinary players should never really have needed to understand in the first place. NAT types, port mappings and virtual networking tools can quickly turn a simple invitation between friends into a troubleshooting session.

Hytale's new approach does not eliminate every difficult network configuration, but it gives the game several ways to establish a connection and introduces a relay when direct communication is impossible.

For many players, the practical result should be simple: click, join and play - without installing Tailscale first.

Sources: Hytale - Pre-Release Patch Notes (Update 6); RFC 8445 - ICE; RFC 8489 - STUN; RFC 8656 - TURN.