MindsEye Dev ‘Heartbroken’ Amid Troubled Launch as Players Report Success With Refunds and Sponsored Streams Are Canceled Last Minute

MindsEye’s troubled launch has continued with reports that the developer is canceling sponsored streams last minute, and some players are securing refunds. The developer has now issued a statement, saying it is “heartbroken” over the game’s difficulties.

Build A Rocket Boy’s debut title came out on June 10 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC via Steam. On Valve’s platform, it currently has a ‘mixed’ user review rating, with most of the complaints revolving around performance issues, bugs and glitches, broken AI, and game crashes.

Some players have reported gaining refunds — even from the notoriously stubborn Sony — rekindling memories of Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous launch back in 2020. CD Projekt’s game was eventually pulled from sale on the PlayStation Store, but there is no indication yet that MindsEye will suffer a similar fate.

PlayStation is allowing refunds for MindsEye https://t.co/zzaHbNt3ET pic.twitter.com/KclpMTwSJi

— Wario64 (@Wario64) June 12, 2025

Meanwhile, streamers are saying they received requests to postpone their sponsored MindsEye livestreams, some last minute. As spotted by Kotaku’s Ethan Gach, popular streamer CohhCarnage revealed this happened to him just as he was about to begin a sponsored MindsEye livestream:

MindsEye dev canceled Twitch streamer CohhCarnage’s playthrough of the game seconds before it was supposed to start.

He said it was the first time that had ever happened in his streaming career. pic.twitter.com/KOjyQ8ml21

— AmericanTruckSongs9 (@ethangach) June 11, 2025

“For the first time in my streaming career, I changed my title for a sponsored stream, I put in a profile button, I put in the command, that was at eight o’clock sharp — my sponsored stream was supposed to start at eight — I opened up MindsEye, and as it was loading, my management contacted me and said, ‘The sponsor does not want to do this right now, they would like to reschedule.’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s a first.’ So the sponsor decided not to do the sponsorship for now, and honestly, it sounds like for MindsEye that was the right decision.”

Another streamer, DarkViperAU, couldn’t even make it through their sponsored MindsEye livestream without breaking down in tears of laughter.

Sponsored MindsEye streamer can’t keep it together when telling viewers where they can buy the game. pic.twitter.com/kdR3EuGims

— AmericanTruckSongs9 (@ethangach) June 11, 2025

In response to the chaos of the past 24 hours, Build A Rocket Boy issued a statement on its Discord, addressing MindsEye’s community and the game’s various issues.

“We are heartbroken that not every player was able to experience the game as we intended,” the statement began. “Our priority is optimizing performance and stability so that every player, across every device, can enjoy an equally high-quality experience.

“Our teams have worked tirelessly throughout the night to solve many of these issues, and we have now identified that the vast majority of crashes were caused by a memory leak. This impacted roughly 1 in 10 of our players. We have developed a hotfix that addresses this issue (alongside other issues that our players have highlighted), which we are working hard to deploy as soon as tomorrow on PC and on consoles once it passes certification with PlayStation and Xbox.

“We are fully committed to ensuring all our players have a great experience, and we will continue to provide frequent and transparent updates. We will do our best to respond to all your comments and feedback.

“Thank you for playing MindsEye. Thank you for your understanding and continued support – it truly means the world to us. We’re grateful and blessed to have you on the journey with us.”

Build A Rocket Boy then outlined the hotfix schedule for the coming weeks. By the end of June, it said, players can expect ongoing performance and stability improvements, a rebalanced ‘hard’ difficulty setting, animation fixes, and AI improvements.

It remains to be seen whether Build A Rocket Boy can turn MindsEye around following this troubled start. While Steam concurrent player numbers do not paint the whole picture of a game’s success, particularly single-player games, they do provide us with an idea of a game’s popularity on Steam’s platform. On Steam, MindsEye has a peak concurrent player count of 3,302.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.