IOI Partners has announced today it will no longer publish MindsEye, leaving all publishing rights and responsibilities in the hands of developer Build A Rocket Boy.
As shared in a press release today, the transition is effective as of March 16, 2026 and IOI Partners will no longer be involved with MindsEye except as necessary to make the transition happen. In addition, a planned crossover event between IOI’s Hitman: World of Assassination and MindsEye has been canceled.
IOI peacing out of this isn’t shocking given the mess that’s been MindsEye. The game was developed by Build a Rocket Boy, a studio headed up by Leslie Benzies who produced several entries in Grand Theft Auto, which lent it significant anticipation. Originally, it was planned to be a part of Everywhere, a sort of “Roblox for adults” that would allow creation of custom game experiences within it. Everywhere never materialized, but MindsEye itself launched in 2025. It was a flop, earning a 4/10 from IGN and currently sitting at a 38 critic score on Metacritic, and a 2.6 user score. It has struggled to find an audience ever since – as of publishing this story, just 17 people are playing it on Steam, and it peaked at merely 3,302 concurrent players.
In the months since, Build a Rocket Boy has released several patches to fix the game’s worst performance issues. Last month, MindsEye got its biggest patch yet, which included more bug fixes and polish, as well as refined AI behavior, but it has yet to introduce promised major content updates as time has instead been spent fixing what’s already there.
In the wake of all this, co-CEO Mark Gerhard has repeatedly claimed that there is a “concerted effort” to “trash the game and the studio” and has suggested people were being paid to post negative things about it, including pointing the finger at an unnamed other studio. IOI has denied the claims.
The studio has now undergone multiple rounds of layoffs, the most recent wave of which involved Gerhard claiming that the studio was investigating “criminal activity” around the game’s launch, saying there was “overwhelming evidence” of “organized espionage and corporate sabotage” against MindsEye. A group of over 90 staff signed onto an open letter last October demanding an apology from company leadership for “mistreatment” of staff as well as “proper compensation” for those laid off.
When asked about MindsEye’s disasterous launch, IOI CEO Hakan Abrak simply said, “Well, that was definitely tough, right?” and affirmed it wasn’t the reception IOI had hoped for.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
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