MindsEye‘s dismal launch – and the chaos surrounding its production and release – continues to be one of the games industry’s most intriguing sagas in recent memory. The bad news seems far from over, though, as reports suggest around 170 employees have been laid off in the past week.
Kotaku shared the news, claiming “sources familiar with the restructuring” have confirmed “that roughly 170 members at the studio have been affected by the layoffs, bringing the total number of staff at the studio down to somewhere around 80 employees”. The cuts arrive after another wave of layoffs in March and last summer.
Build A Rocket Boy hasn’t publicly announced the layoffs yet, but ex-staffers like James Tyler (Technical Level Designer) and Tom Cross (Audio Designer) confirmed via LinkedIn they’re no longer working at the studio. Members of the studio’s social media team also shared they’d be ending their work at the developer this week via Discord, according to Kotaku’s report.
Back in March, IOI Partners officially exited the publishing deal with Build A Rocket Boy, leaving the developer to handle MindsEye’s publishing moving forward. Since then, CEO Mark Gerhard has continued to point to external forces that tried to sabotage the game and its user-generated content ambitions. In fact, the recent Blacklisted content update added a short story campaign inspired by the alleged real-life attacks against BARB.
Meanwhile, Chris Wilson, an ex-lead animator on MindsEye, has explained what went wrong with the game from his point of view, and shot down the idea the company’s staff would try to sabotage its own creative endeavour: “The development staff did all that they could and tried their hardest to make it something very, very special. We would in no way try to sabotage or bring down the company”.
