While it has been no secret that developer Build a Rocket Boy hasn’t been doing too well with its latest title, MindsEye, new reports indicate that several jobs at the studio might be at risk. According to IGN, emails have been sent out internally that warn employees of that their jobs might be at risk. The reports also indicate that these emails were also sent out to PlayFusion – a studio acquired by Build a Rocket Boy last year. Overall, around 300 jobs seem to be at risk.
While these emails had been sent out, the report also reveals that studio boss Leslie Benzies had addressed the staff through a video call earlier this week. As part of sources who wished to remain anonymous at the risk of their jobs, Benzies spoke about the studio “bouncing back”, which would eventually lead to a relaunch of MindsEye. Benzies reportedly also blamed the game’s problems on “saboteurs” from both inside the company and outside.
Interestingly, Benzies’ comment about saboteurs echo similar ones made by co-CEO of the studio Mark Gerhard back in June just a few days before MindsEye was released. At the time, Gerhard wrote on the studio’s Discord channel that he believes “100%” that the negativity surrounding the title was financed by someone.
“I just said that there is a concerted effort by 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,” he wrote in another post on the Discord channel. “It’s pretty easy to see the bots and the repeated replies to any content that we put out.”
Reports of employees being warned about impending lay-offs come just a couple of weeks after initial reports came out that Build a Rocket Boy might be looking to let go of more than 100 members of its staff. The report came about as part of a 45-day consultation process that is required by UK law whenever a company is cutting more than 100 jobs within a span of 90 days. This process had reportedly begun on June 23.
According to analysts, MindsEye has been affected quite a bit by negative word of mouth, with the game’s reach being “just shy” of 250,000 players total. Of these, around 150,000 were on PS5, and 35,000 players on Steam. The low player count on Steam also poses a major problem for the title, since one of its core features – the Build.MindsEye creation kit that allows players to create their own content – is exclusive to the PC version of the game.
The negative word of mouth for the game likely came about thanks to the plethora of technical issues that MindsEye has had since it launched. Shortly after it came out, the studio released a statement on Reddit where it wrote about being “heartbroken” over the state that MindsEye launched in.
MindsEye is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review. Also keep in mind that Sony has been offering refunds on the PS5 version of the game. Also check out our thoughts on whether there are hopes that MindsEye might bounce back.
