Haypi Kingdom: The Full Story (2010–2026)

Haypi Kingdom was the first real MMO strategy game most of us ever played on a phone. It launched on the App Store on January 18, 2010, sat in the top-10 grossing charts for three years by Haypi’s own account, got its last update in August 2013, and has been slowly dying ever since. This is the definitive page: what it was, the full timeline, why it mattered, what actually happened, whether you can still play it in 2026, and where the players went.

What Haypi Kingdom was

Haypi Co. described it as the “#1 free mmog for iPhone/iTouch/iPad”: a massively multiplayer game set in the middle ages where you played a general managing a kingdom, boosting resource production, adventuring in the wild land, reaping treasures, and battling other players. That copy undersells it. In an App Store full of disposable time-killers, Haypi Kingdom was a server-side world that kept running while your phone was in your pocket. Players shared one numbered server, your city existed whether or not you were looking at it, and an army that left at midnight arrived at 4 a.m. whether you were awake or not.

It was free with in-app coin packs from $0.99 to $99.99, and it was genuinely successful: Haypi later claimed the game was “ranked amongst the Top 10 Grossing for 3 consecutive years from 2010 to 2012.” It got Pocket Gamer coverage, review videos on YouTube, forum threads on TouchArcade and XDA, and enough players to justify translations into Chinese, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Korean. If you were on an iPhone 3GS or a third-gen iPod touch around 2010, there is a good chance somebody in your class or office was running a city.

Haypi Kingdom timeline

1. Jan 18, 2010
   Launch on the iPhone App Store
   Haypi Kingdom releases free with in-app coin packs. iPad (Haypi Kingdom HD), Android and Windows Phone 7 editions follow.
2. 2010–2012
   Top-10 grossing for three years
   Haypi’s own claim, made in the sequel’s store description. New numbered servers keep opening; the game grows to well over a hundred of them.
3. Aug 8, 2012
   Android “Haypi Kingdom Legend” pulled from Google Play
   The com.haypi.kingdom.activity listing is unpublished. Old 3.22 APKs still circulate on mirror sites, unofficial and unmaintained.
4. Aug 28, 2013
   Version 3.20, the final iOS update
   Adds a Raid feature for unoccupied oases and forts, new items and tasks, and better worker regeneration. Nothing ships after this.
5. Sept 17, 2014
   Haypi Kingdom: The Return of the King
   The sequel launches on the App Store one week after its press release. Heroes, six races, PvE campaign levels.
6. Dec 22, 2015
   Sequel’s last update (v1.1.5)
   Adds the War Hall. Nothing ships for the Kingdom line after this.
7. 2016
   Players report mass server closures
   An April 2016 App Store review counts servers 134 and 135 gone and says only a few remain, with no refunds for coins.
8. Sept 2017
   iOS 11 ends 32-bit apps
   Haypi Kingdom was never rebuilt for 64-bit. From iOS 11 onward it cannot install or launch.
9. 2026
   Listing still visible, still uninstallable
   The App Store page remains, showing Apple’s notice that the developer needs to update the app. Version 3.20 is still the last build.

The mechanics that made it

Every veteran has the top bar burned into memory: wood, stone, iron, crop, worker, money, coin. Seven icons, three of them things newer games never bothered with. Here is the system, roughly in the order the official tutorial taught it.

Crop, starvation and workers

Crop was food. Every troop ate crop per hour, and the tutorial said it plainly: if you did not have enough crops, your troops would starve. That single rule made a big army a liability instead of a trophy, and it is the mechanic more ex-players name than any other. Workers (the tutorial called them slaves) came from your Main Building level. Money came from selling at the Market, occupying forts, hunting, or exchanging coins at 1 coin to 2,000 money. Coins were the premium currency, spent on speed-ups, production boosts, VIP time, resources, treasures, recalling troops and city loyalty. You started with 30 and could earn more from Try Your Luck, treasure chests, Earn Free Coins, or a recruited friend reaching 1st Viscount.

Four troop types, traps and turrets

Infantry, Cavalry, Archers and Catapults. Each had attack, defense, life, speed, range and overload (Haypi’s word for carry capacity), and the army marched at the speed of its slowest unit. Speed and range decided who struck first, which is why archer walls and catapult stacks mattered and why a cheap infantry screen (the meatshield) soaked hits for the units behind it. On the wall you researched and built Traps and Turrets. A city that had chewed through a few overconfident attacks earned a reputation on the server.

Oases, forts and hunting

The map around your city held oases and forts guarded by NPC garrisons. Occupy one and it boosted production; forts also paid money. Hunting sent troops to an oasis for treasure and money, and it doubled as the hiding trick every veteran learned early: troops out hunting could not be attacked, so you sent the army hunting before bed. The final 3.20 update added a Raid option for unoccupied oases and forts, which tells you the developers were still tuning the map loop right up until they stopped.

Market, titles and the 3rd Baron cliff

The Market was player-to-player. You dumped surplus stone for crop at 2 a.m. and hoped a rival was not doing the same. Above all of it sat the title ladder: 20 titles from 3rd Civilian to King, climbed with prestige from battles and sometimes gated by treasure. Beginner protection lasted 7 days or until you reached 3rd Baron, whichever came first, and that cliff shaped everyone’s first week: rush titles for the stronger attributes, or hold at 1st Civilian and farm in peace. The Rank screen sorted the server by title, prestige and alliance, and everybody checked it. For the fuller reference, the Haypi Kingdom guide walks every system in order.

The community: alliances, servers and the forum

Alliances were the actual game. Members could not attack each other, the alliance chat tab was where you lived, and a decent leader ran the thing like an organization: officers, farming schedules, diplomacy with the other big alliances, and coordinated wars people set alarms for. Each numbered server had its own politics because each one was a fresh world; a server 40 veteran rolling onto server 120 arrived as a known quantity or a nobody depending on who else had moved. Server culture also had a dark side that the reviews still show. A September 2014 review describes losing an account after sharing a password with an alliance leader, which was a rite of passage for more people than would admit it.

Around the game sat Haypi’s official forum (it still receives the odd post in 2026), the company’s Haypi Times magazine, two fan wikis on Fandom that are now largely abandoned, and a long tail of YouTube guides. A May 2014 App Store review still praised the “great community” a year after the last update, which says something about how much of the game was the people. If you want that side of it back, the reunion page is where old alliances are finding each other.

What happened to Haypi Kingdom

There was never a shutdown announcement, and anyone who gives you a precise date the servers went dark is guessing. What the record actually shows is a slow fade. Haypi’s news page has no items after 2012. The Android Legend edition was unpublished from Google Play on August 8, 2012. The last iOS build, 3.20, shipped August 28, 2013. By then the studio’s attention had already moved to Haypi Dragon, Haypi Monster and, from 2014, the sequel, and the original stopped getting attention.

That reviewer said they held 30 to 45 accounts across the servers and complained about lag and no refunds for coins, which was the mood of the last committed players. Then, in September 2017, iOS 11 dropped support for 32-bit apps. Haypi Kingdom had never been rebuilt for 64-bit, so on any updated iPhone the app simply would not launch, whether or not anything was still listening on the other end. One later five-star review put it best: the writer bought an old iPhone on an older version of iOS just to try to get back in. The honest, longer version is in what happened to Haypi Kingdom, and the server-by-server evidence is in the servers article.

The sequel: Haypi Kingdom: The Return of the King (2014)

If you have ever searched for “Haypi Kingdom 2,” this is the game you were looking for; nothing was ever literally named Haypi Kingdom 2. Haypi announced The Return of the King by press release on September 10, 2014, saying it had taken the old team two years, and it landed on the App Store on September 17, 2014. It was a different formula rather than a remake: you played a feudal lord recruiting heroes with skills, six races, a PvE campaign of ten scenes and hundreds of levels against Rebels, Orcs and Demons, plus Alliance Boxes, Alliance Techs, PvP tournaments and gear synthesis. It required iOS 6 and was maintained for about fifteen months; the final update, version 1.1.5 on December 22, 2015, added a War Hall for assembling allies’ troops.

It did not recapture the original’s audience. A March 2016 review called it riddled with built-in exploits with unresponsive support; a November 2020 review reported being stuck on the user-agreement page with no working Agree button on an iPhone 11 Pro. Unlike the original, the sequel could still be installed on a then-current iPhone as late as 2020 (that reviewer got as far as the agreement page), but with no maintenance since 2015 it is not a working game in any meaningful sense. The full write-up is in the Return of the King article.

Can you still play Haypi Kingdom in 2026?

Practically, no. The original was never delisted, which surprises people: the App Store page for “Haypi kingdom” is still there, still showing version 3.20 from 2013. But it carries Apple’s notice that the developer needs to update it to work with your version of iOS, and it cannot be installed on iOS 11 or later. An iPhone stuck on iOS 10 could in theory install it, and Android users can find unofficial 3.22 APKs on mirror sites, but an MMO strategy game is server-side; a client without live servers is a login screen, and sideloaded APKs from mirror sites are a well-known malware vector. We keep the current state of play in can you still play Haypi Kingdom and cover the private-server question, which is mostly dead ends, separately.

Where the players went

For a decade the answer was nowhere good. The genre moved toward base-builders tuned for spending, and nothing kept the specific things that made Haypi work: an economy that could starve your army, four troop types with real roles, a map worth holding, and a title ladder everyone could see. That gap is what Prestige: Kingdom War was built to fill. It is an independent, ground-up rebuild, not a port of Haypi’s code and not affiliated with Haypi Co., released on the App Store on May 28, 2026 and also available on Google Play. It keeps the formula: wood, stone, iron and crop plus money, coins and workers; Infantry, Cavalry, Archers and Catapults with overload and slowest-unit march speed; Traps and Turrets; oases and forts on a persistent 600×600 map; hunting that hides your troops; a player Market; alliances whose members cannot attack each other; 7-day beginner protection that ends at 3rd Baron; and the same 20-title climb from 3rd Civilian to King. The differences (a battle simulator, events, a daily spin in the Try Your Luck tradition) are laid out honestly in Haypi Kingdom vs Prestige: Kingdom War.

Bottom line

Haypi Kingdom ran from January 18, 2010 to a last update on August 28, 2013, spent three years in the top-10 grossing charts by Haypi’s own account, spawned a sequel in 2014 that was abandoned by the end of 2015, and became unlaunchable on modern iPhones when iOS 11 arrived in September 2017. It was never delisted and never officially shut down; it just stopped. What it proved is that a phone could host a persistent world with real stakes, and the people who lived in one have been looking for another ever since.

Prestige: Kingdom War is an independent game and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Haypi Co. Haypi Kingdom is referenced as the classic that inspired it.