The game "King of Meat," which has been online for only four months, announces it will shut down, with full refunds from Amazon.

IT House, February 24 — According to Kotaku, the purely online, continuously operated cooperative game “King of Meat” was launched last fall. Just about four months later, the game announced it would shut down its servers in April. Stories like this are common in the gaming industry.

“King of Meat” was released on October 31, 2025, priced at $30 (IT House note: approximately 207.5 RMB at current exchange rates). Published by Amazon, the game previously released a high-quality (and likely costly) animated trailer during the Gamescom opening night event in August 2024, and even invited influencer MrBeast to produce promotional videos. Several creators played “King of Meat” at major events, with these promotional efforts also costing a lot. Reportedly, the management of the development studio Glowmade aimed for 100,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch. However, according to SteamDB data, the game’s peak online players never exceeded 400, and the total online players across console and PC platforms never surpassed 1,000. Unsurprisingly, the studio planned layoffs at the end of December. Now, the game is about to shut down permanently.

On February 23, local time, Amazon announced in a statement titled “The Future of ” that the game’s servers will be permanently shut down on April 9, 2026.

The announcement stated: “Although Glowmade poured creativity and innovation into , unfortunately, the game did not attract the player base we expected. Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to cease investment in the game. The servers will close on April 9, 2026. Until then, players can still enjoy all existing content in the game, and we hope you will have a final great time with fellow players.”

The announcement also said that all players who purchased “King of Meat” will receive a full refund in the coming weeks.

Amazon stated: “We sincerely thank every player who supported and the excellent community that formed around the game. Your enthusiasm, creativity, and feedback mean a lot to us and the Glowmade team. We also thank Glowmade for their dedication and passion throughout the collaboration, and we wish them continued success in the future.”

This is not the first ongoing online game to announce shutdowns in recent years. In fact, when a studio launches a purely online, continuously operated game today, it is highly likely to fade away within a year or even less. The 2024 game “Concord” is a typical example; it launched and failed miserably, shutting down in less than two weeks, which directly impacted Sony’s ongoing game strategy. As PlayStation re-adjusts its approach, related projects are likely to be canceled, and studios may face closure. However, Sony has not completely abandoned this track.

But it’s not only Sony risking everything and recklessly chasing long-term games that can “print money.” Amazon is about to shut down the once-popular large-scale multiplayer online game “New World,” after previously cutting the online shooter “Furnace.” In recent years, many ongoing online games and other online titles have been discontinued, and the list is quite long. Similar tragedies continue to unfold. Despite numerous failures around them, publishers still pour large amounts of money and resources into chasing successful long-term titles like “Fortnite.” Today, only a few of these highly successful games remain on the market, and they are all titles released many years ago that players still enjoy today.