"We've got a great team, money in the bank, and financial independence": Glowmade comes out swinging after Amazon pulled the plug on King of Meat

GamesIndustry.biz says Glowmade has turned Amazon’s shutdown of King of Meat into a relatively clean pivot rather than a crisis. Studio head Jonny Hopper says the split was amicable, the team owns its IP, and careful spending left the Guildford studio with enough runway to stay independent and keep hiring.

That matters because Glowmade is now using that cushion to push ahead on Rogue Fortune, a single-player roguelike built around Tetris-style inventory puzzles and Hades-like run structure. The game was prototyped in January with a deliberately tiny team and no artists for the first three months, so the studio could validate the core mechanics before expanding scope.

Hopper says Amazon told Glowmade at the start of 2026 that King of Meat would be shut down, and the team shifted focus quickly. The studio is now treating itself more like a startup: still ambitious, but constrained by finite time and money rather than a publisher’s budget.

Glowmade is also leaning on its own tech stack, which Hopper says naturally limits overreach and keeps the team focused on what the engine can actually support. The studio wants to keep a steady cadence going, with roughly two projects in flight and a goal of one release per year, while Rogue Fortune is currently targeting 2027.