Build a Rocket Boy and IO Interactive announced MindsEye back in Sony’s February 2025 State of Play. The game was developed by former Grand Theft Auto developers, featuring former soldier Jacob Diaz infiltrating Redrock’s military tech manufacturers. It had a full-filling promise of high-octane action, captivating storytelling, and an interactive overworld. After launching on June 10, PC and PS5 players encountered a series of bugs. Now, Build a Rocket Boy has issued the team’s layoffs.
MindsEye Experienced Cyberpunk 2077’s Setback
Build A Rocket Boy showed ambitions for MindsEye to be IO Interactive’s GTA to rival Rockstar’s upcoming sequel, GTA 6. Gamers saw the preview offers first-person shooting, hacking, drone surveillance, stealth, and car driving in the city of Redrock. Jason’s mission is to expose the military for mishandling their artificial intelligence experiments. MindsEye appeared to be confident in its presentation.
Unfortunately, players did not experience what was shown at the State of Play. The compilation footage stated that cinematics and gameplay were captured on a PS5 Pro. Instead, MindsEye owners were caught off guard by model glitching, missing cue effects, game crashes, and graphical errors. They reported their findings to Build A Rocket Boy’s tech support overnight. The commotion pushed the developers to contact their Twitch sponsors to reschedule their stream. Those who played on the PS5 were offered a full refund.
A hotfix was later released on June 14, promising that certain bugs had been repaired. YouTuber L321 presented a short of what the patch did. Only performance on FPS has been enhanced during cutscenes, and the CPR minigame is given a lower difficulty. The rest of the update has MindsEye still performing poorly. Gamers were heavily reminded of CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 launch before it became its best playable state.
Build a Robot Boy Confirmed Layoffs
Fast forward to June 23, an anonymous source shared intel of Build A Rocket Boy has removed employees during MindsEye’s patching stage. IGN received the studio’s confirmation with the following statement: “We have had to make the painful decision to notify our hardworking team of some internal changes. While reassigning roles for as many impacted by these changes as possible. Sadly, we are initiating a formal consultation process that may result in redundancies.
MindEye’s launch has been a significant milestone for Build A Rocket Boy. The challenges we’ve faced have only strengthened our resolve. We are deeply saddened by the June 23 decision, yet thankful for our incredible team. The studio is working continuously on MindsEye’s performance optimization.”
According to IGN, the employee consultation process takes 45 days. The procedure is executed under United Kingdom law if an employer proposes 100 or more dismissals within a 3-month period. Build A Rocket Boy currently has 300 UK employees, while 200 work abroad.
Six days before MindsEye‘s launch, Build A Rocket Boy had already shown troubling signs with employees. Eurogamer informed that Chief Legal Officer Riley Graebner and Chief Financial Officer Paul Bland departed from the developer studio. Graebner worked for the team for three and a half years before announcing his leave on LinkedIn on June 3rd. Bland worked at the studio since 2023 and left on the same day. Neither gave a reason for their departure.
