Toast Interactive, an Australian VR studio, closes its doors and fires most of its employees.

Toast Interactive, an Australian VR studio, closes its doors and fires most of its employees.

Toast Interactive, the Queensland-based VR game development studio known for Richie’s Plank Experience and Max Mustard, has been gutted by a round of redundancies, and its office is set to shutter. In a post on social media, the team expressed gratitude for the support it had received so far, and noted the decision to wind down operations was one they “never wanted to make.”

The “majority” of the studio’s staff are now out of work in an incredibly difficult time for the games industry, although Toast has promised to “assist where [it] can with their next journey.”

“So much talent and passion went into the creation of Max Mustard and every single accolade speaks volume,” Toni Eastes, Co-Founder and CEO, and Richard Eastes, Co-Founder & Creative Director said. “We want to thank and acknowledge everyone who has been part of our journey at Toast.”

Richie’s Plank Experience and Max Mustard will continue to be supported in future, with a much smaller team looking to maintain and improve these games.

In its announcement, Toast Interactive did not dwell on the reasons for the office shut down and staff redundancies, although a Reddit post surfaced by UploadVR expands on a range of issues that may have forced the decision.

As posted by the RichiesPlank developer account, it appears Max Mustard did not sell well enough to sustain Toast Interactive in the long term. While the account acknowledged the game’s aesthetic suggested it was for kids, rather than the “OG Mario generation,” it also flagged major issues with discovery, which may have impacted sales.

“What … hurt Max Mustard is it received zero store presence and forced to launch at a low month,” the account said. “We assumed that if it scored a high user rating that it would appear in the important top-rated category on the store, completing its discovery loop … But never appeared. Apparently, it’s ‘the algorithm’. Wasn’t in any other category. Hidden gems? No. Made in Australia? No. Nothing. It was heart breaking.”

While the studio was able to make some sales headway with a promo discount hidden within Richie’s Plank Experience, this was not sustained, long-term.

Given the promising work of Toast Interactive, and the excellence of Max Mustard, it’s hard not to feel like this announcement is a massive shame. Our thoughts are with those developers now out of work.