MindsEye director reportedly says the studio will relaunch the game, as around 300 staff are at risk of being laid off
Things continue to sound not very ok at MindsEye developers Build A Rocket Boy. Around the same time as an ongoing redundancy process has reportedly seen all 300 of the studio’s UK staff sent emails informing them they’re at risk of losing their jobs, game director Leslie Benzies has allegedly told them BARB will somehow relaunch the troubled game.
Yeah, exactly. You what, Leslie? That’s the same Leslie who also reportedly blamed the rocky time MindsEye’s had following its launch on what IGN calls “internal and external saboteurs” in its latest report.
IGN’s report says at-risk emails have been issued to 300 UK-based workers. Some have also sent to an unknown number of staff at PlayFusion, a studio BARB acquired in December 2024, and which is supposed to be releasing an FPS called Ascendant this year.
While that’s been going on, MindsEye director and ex-Rockstar president Leslie Benzies reportedly finally gave his first address to BARB staff since the game came out via video call on July 2nd. IGN cite folks who attended this chat as revealing that Benzies said, er, some things.
He apparently asserted that the studio will somehow rebound from its troubles and relaunch MindsEye. Benzies also allegedly made comments about what IGN refer to as “internal and external saboteurs” being a factor to blame for both MindsEye and BARB’s problems.
If so, first of all sigh, and second, that sounds similar to BARB co-CEO Mark Gerhard ended up attracting criticism for claiming there are “some people that don’t want to see Leslie or Build A Rocket Boy to be successful that are making a concerted effort to trash the game and the studio” while talking to fans on MindsEye’s official Discord server earlier this year.
Like, come on lads, your workers have been hard at work putting out rapid updates to try and fix the issues folks have identified with it that you can just patch out, a bunch of them reportedly might be about to lose their jobs, and you’re here allegedly saying stuff like this?
This would be the second time the studio behind MindsEye has cut jobs this year, assuming layoffs come to pass. That February round of layoffs affected a still unspecified number of staff.
How would you relaunch a game after parting ways with at least some of the people you’d need to pull off a Cyberpunk 2077-esque redemption arc? Beats me, but then again, a big-brained exec I am not.
