After 250 job losses and “disastrous” management, MindsEye's past and present staff unite to publicly call for better working conditions amid fears of further redundancies
Blog Andrew Joseph 11 Oct , 2025 0
More than 90 employees were involved in this year's blockbuster failure mind's eye The company has issued a scathing open letter to company management calling for change following “one of the worst video game releases of this decade.”
this letter It is said that 250 to 300 employees are currently unemployed due to the failure of MindsEye, which is entirely due to the decision of the company boss. There has also been strong criticism of the way the redundancies have been handled, with some suggesting misinformation may have led to “dozens of staff being wrongly sacked”.
The letter, published today via the UK Games Development Workers Union IWGB, calls on MindsEye developer Build a Rocket Boy, and specifically its founder Leslie Benzies and co-CEO Mark Gerhard, to apologize for “abusive” behavior by employees, provide “appropriate compensation to those who have been made redundant” and improve the redundancy process ahead of what sounds like expected “future redundancies”.
“For years, you have expected (employees) to adapt to your every whim, while those who disagreed were shut down or abandoned,” the letter reads. “These layoffs occurred because you repeatedly refused to listen to your employees' years of experience, resulting in one of the worst video game launches of the decade.”
Issues faced as a result of management failures include “radical changes” to the way work was done with little explanation, “confusion and distress among all employees” when layoffs began – including various errors in the dismissal process, and mandatory overtime four months before MindsEye was launched, but employees said they were still not fully compensated.
The letter continued: “These issues and many others have caused pain and stress for your employees. Our experience at the company has been one of burnout, job insecurity, health issues and the failure of a game that many of us have invested years of our lives in.”
In an email to IGN, the IWGB provided further quotes from former staff members to support the claims in the letter. A former MindsEye developer said Build A Rocket Boy's “public statements are inconsistent with the reality of working conditions at the company.” Another report detailed colleagues experiencing “mental and even physical ailments beyond the usual levels of burnout” due to months of overtime.
“Studio leadership chose not to take responsibility for the game's failure, instead blaming it on saboteurs, as if individual employees or online influencers might have caused the situation,” one former employee said. Gerhard's strange pre-launch comments Blaming the game's poor reception on unknown hostile forces – a stance MindsEye publisher IO Interactive later partnered with. “Leadership’s arrogance in believing they could act with impunity throughout the development process, and subsequent layoffs, forced me and many former and continuing employees to take a stand.”
Originally planned as a single player component There are seemingly now-abandoned Metaverse-style platforms everywhereMindsEye finally launched Negative reaction and lackluster sales. Build a Rocket Boy has since stated that it hopes to continue developing the game and relaunch it, Despite recent warnings that this will take longer than planned.
Today's letter concludes by calling for a public apology and appropriate compensation, for remaining employees still at risk of redundancy to be paid while on notice, a commitment to use external partners in future redundancies to prevent unfair treatment, and for “concerted, meaningful and documented efforts to improve conditions and processes within the company.”
“The treatment the staff at Build A Rocket Boy have faced over the past 12 months is appalling,” Spring Mcparlin Jones, president of IWGB Games Workers, said in a statement to IGN. “They were routinely belittled, lied to, and manipulated by the company they had dedicated so many years to. Despite this, they were able to maintain trust in each other and work together to fight for fair treatment.”
Image source: IWGB
Tom Phillips is IGN's news editor. You can contact Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social