Amazon’s latest attempt to gain a foothold in games, 2025’s multiplayer co-op game show King of Meat, has failed. Developer Glowmade and publisher Amazon Game Studios confirmed Monday that King of Meat will shut down in April, and that players who purchased the game will receive full refunds.
“Despite the creativity and innovation Glowmade brought to King of Meat, the game has unfortunately not found the audience we hoped for,” Amazon Game Studios said in a statement on the King of Meat website. “As a result, we have made the difficult decision to conclude our investment in the game, and King of Meat‘s servers will close on April 9, 2026. Players will be able to access and play all existing content until then, so we encourage you to enjoy your remaining time in the game with your fellow Contenders.”
King of Meat‘s closure likely won’t come as a surprise to players, or anyone who’s paid attention to Amazon’s game output over the past decade. While the game received mostly positive reviews on Steam — critics were more harsh, based on aggregate review data from OpenCritic — King of Meat peaked at 320 concurrent players there. Based on our hands-on experience with the game at launch, console players didn’t show up either.
“I dove in on PlayStation 5 across its maiden weekend and was very rarely able to matchmake with enough players to get a full four-player team going,” Polygon’s Giovanni Colantonio wrote in our early impressions of King of Meat. “I came back on launch day proper and had an even tougher time finding even one teammate. Things don’t seem too promising on Steam either, where the game currently has 58 reviews at the time of writing, pulled from the game’s five days of early access.”
King of Meat is the latest casualty at Amazon, which last month confirmed that its once-hot MMO New World: Aeternum would shut down for good in 2027. Before that, Amazon Game Studios tried and failed with games like MOBA-inspired shooter Crucible (which unlaunched weeks after its release) and sports-fantasy brawler Breakaway (which lasted a little longer). Amazon also canceled an in-development Lord of the Rings MMO, and has mostly found success in publishing other companies’ MMOs, like Smilegate’s Lost Ark and NCSoft’s Throne and Liberty. Amazon still has a different Lord of the Rings MMORPG in the works, as well as other untitled projects and a pair of Tomb Raider games.
Glowmade and Amazon unveiled King of Meat in 2024 at Gamescom Opening Night Live and released it the following year on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
