King of Meat developer Glowmade will layoff “around a dozen people” early next year, according to a new report from Insider Gaming. These “voluntary redundancies” come just two months after the multiplayer party game hit Steam and after it reportedly failed to hit an ambitious 100,000 concurrent player target. King of Meat peaked at just 320 people on PC instead.
Over the past few days, several Glowmade developers posted to LinkedIn that they’re looking for work. The U.K.-based studio published King of Meat in October, backed by Amazon Game Studio. Insider Gaming reported that discussions around the layoffs began earlier in December, and that leadership previously told staff the studio “had the runway to keep going.”
Amazon Game Studios announced in 2021 that it was expanding its publishing efforts with Glowmade, which was working on an “exciting new IP.” Glowmade had 25 staffers, according to a news release at the time.
The studio’s leadership was reportedly hoping King of Meat would reach “a concurrent player count of at least 100,000,” but instead failed to maintain 1,000 players across platforms. On Steam, King of Meat had a recent 24-hour peak of 23 players; its top concurrent player number there is 320 players, according to SteamDB.
Most people probably only remember it as the game with the flashy trailer at Gamescom 2024 which featured an animated version of Opening Night Live host Geoff Keighley. That memorable moment could have cost close to half a million dollars, but apparently didn’t do much to keep King of Meat bubbling around in the popular consciousness.
King of Meat‘s October release didn’t go well despite a huge marketing push, including a big budget MrBeast video. The video, which included a whole dang set, more than a dozen content creators, and a $250,000 prize, is essentially a mini-King of Meat esports event. It was published just after King of Meat‘s release date and racked up 6.8 million views.
Kotaku has reached out to Glowmade and Amazon Game Studios for comment.