MindsEye’s catastrophic launch to be followed by layoffs at former GTA producer’s studio

Build A Rocket Boy, the studio founded by former GTA producer Leslie Benzies, has begun a redundancy process (thanks, IGN). A 45 day consultation process has begun, which under UK law happens when an employer is planning over 100 redundancies within a 90 day period (Build a Rocket Boy is estimated to have 300 employees within the UK).

The news follows the launch of the studio’s first game, MindsEye, which can only be described as a bit of a mess. The game is not great and currently sits at just under 2,000 “mostly negative” reviews on Steam (random example: “Do not do it under any circumstances”) and a 38 on Metacritic (where the user reviews are even worse).

MindsEye may well have suffered from the fact it was marketed using Benzies’ considerable pedigree: despite leaving Rockstar North under a cloud in 2016, he’s arguably as responsible as anyone for the global phenomenon that is Grand Theft Auto.

Build a Rocket Boy’s main focus has always been Everywhere, its upcoming Roblox-for-adults creation platform, and it was claimed MindsEye would show the potential of Everywhere’s toolset: it now looks like a bad misfire.

Things probably weren’t helped by the studio’s co-CEO claiming that negative reactions were part of a bot conspiracy which… well, feels a little like denying reality. Build a Rocket Boy has committed to fixing various technical issues, and has begun rolling out patches, but it feels unlikely that MindsEye will receive any long-term support beyond that (there is a post-launch roadmap which promises a multiplayer mode, among other things, but I wouldn’t hold my breath).

I’ve contacted Build a Rocket Boy for comment on the nature and scale of the redundancies, and will update with any response. At the time of writing, and of course this is not the whole story, MindsEye has 70 players on Steam.