MindsEye flopped so badly that its developer is now being wound down. Build a Rocket Boy cut its remaining staff in mid-September 2026, fifteen months after the game launched on 10 June 2025 to Metacritic scores of 37 on PC and 28 on PlayStation 5. The studio has issued no closure statement.
What Has Been Confirmed, and What Has Not
There is no official closure announcement. What is confirmed is a final round of redundancies, reported on 16 September 2026, that left the Edinburgh studio with almost nobody on staff.
Kotaku reported the round first, working from posts by departing employees. Dan Hawkins, a principal talent acquisition partner at the company, wrote that he was raising his “green banner, along with the rest of my colleagues at Build a Rocket Boy” and would help “wrap things up here in the HR department”. Adam Ridsdale, a lead weapon and prop artist, said he was facing redundancy “along with the rest of my colleagues”.
Build a Rocket Boy did not respond to Kotaku’s request for comment. As of 19 September 2026 the company has published no statement about closing, filed no public notice, and set no end date for MindsEye’s online services.
What Was MindsEye?
MindsEye was a single-player action-adventure game released on 10 June 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Windows. It was directed by Leslie Benzies, the former president of Rockstar North and a producer on the Grand Theft Auto series until 2016.
Benzies left Rockstar in 2016 and sued parent company Take-Two Interactive that April for $150 million in unpaid royalties. The case ended in a confidential settlement in February 2019. He had already co-founded the studio that became Build a Rocket Boy with fellow Rockstar North alumni Matthew Smith and Colin Entwistle; it was set up as Royal Circus Games and renamed in October 2018, with offices in Edinburgh, Budapest and Los Angeles.
The pitch drew on that pedigree: an open-city action game from the people who had made Grand Theft Auto, backed by a separate creation platform and a roadmap of episodic releases.
Why Did MindsEye Fail at Launch?
It shipped broken and reviewed worse than almost any major release of its year. Metacritic recorded 37 out of 100 on PC, 33 on Xbox Series X and S, and 28 on PlayStation 5.
Critics were not sent copies before release, so reviews landed after players had already bought it. Reports of crashes and performance problems on PlayStation 5 followed within days, and Sony approved refunds for digital buyers in June 2025 — a step it rarely takes, the closest recent precedent being the PlayStation 4 version of Cyberpunk 2077.
The studio apologised, saying the team was heartbroken that not every player could experience the game as intended. Its leadership then took a different line. Benzies attributed the reception to “internal and external saboteurs”, and co-chief executive Mark Gerhard suggested some of those writing negatively had been paid to do so. Staff did not accept the explanation, and neither did the press.
How Many Jobs Were Lost?
More than 250 developers had been cut by October 2025, and the rest went in September 2026. The sequence was public from the start.
- 10 June 2025: MindsEye is released on three platforms.
- 25 June 2025: Build a Rocket Boy confirms a formal consultation that may result in redundancies, saying it is “committed to handling this process with transparency, fairness, and respect for all employees”. The 45-day UK consultation period it triggered applies when 100 or more roles are proposed for redundancy.
- October 2025: Reporting puts the total above 250 developers, most of them in Edinburgh.
- Through 2026: Further rounds follow, shrinking the studio further.
- 16 September 2026: The last round is reported, with departing staff describing the company as being wound up rather than trimmed.
The pattern is familiar in the industry. Microsoft sold Ninja Theory rather than closing it in July 2026, while the French studio behind GreedFall was liquidated outright in April 2026. Build a Rocket Boy is closer to the second case, and unusually, it collapsed with a shipped game still on sale.
What Did Staff Accuse Build a Rocket Boy Of?
Workers accused management of mandatory overtime, a mishandled redundancy process and covert monitoring software. Two separate actions were brought.
In October 2025, 93 current and former employees signed an open letter alongside the Game Workers Branch of the Independent Workers of Great Britain. It said every employee had been asked to work an extra eight hours a week for the four months before launch, with only seven hours of time off in lieu guaranteed for every eight worked. It also said dismissal notices carried the wrong notice periods and that staff had been placed in the wrong teams, so their performance was scored by the wrong managers. The company replied that it had “approached the process with care and transparency, meeting all our obligations”.
The second dispute concerned surveillance. The union said management installed monitoring software called Teramind on at least 35 employee devices, where it ran for roughly ten weeks between January and March 2026, capturing keystrokes, screen activity and microphone audio. The software was removed in March 2026 after 40 workers filed a collective grievance. The IWGB began legal proceedings in April 2026, saying the company had not disclosed what data was collected, how it was stored, or the legal basis for using it.
Why Did IO Interactive End the Publishing Deal?
IO Interactive handed MindsEye back to its developer in March 2026, nine months after launch. The Hitman studio had announced the publishing partnership on 16 October 2024, before anyone had played the game.
A joint statement said “IOI Partners’ involvement with MindsEye comes to an end, except for any essential transitional functions required to transfer publisher-of-record status to Build A Rocket Boy”, and that Build a Rocket Boy would “assume sole publishing responsibilities going forward”. A crossover mission bringing Hitman content into MindsEye, announced in June 2025, was cancelled with the split.
That left the studio publishing, funding and supporting a game that had already lost most of the team behind it.
What Happened to Everywhere and the $110 Million?
Everywhere was never released, and it was the project the money was raised for. In January 2024 Build a Rocket Boy closed a Series D round of more than $110 million led by RedBird Capital Partners, with Galaxy Interactive, NetEase Games, Endeavor, Alignment Growth, Woodline Partners and GTAM Partners taking part.
The stated plan was to launch Everywhere, a multi-world platform with a creation toolset called Arcadia, and to ship the first episode of MindsEye. Only MindsEye arrived. By May 2025 the Everywhere website redirected to the MindsEye site and references to the project had been removed from the studio’s own pages; Benzies said at the time that it would return “soon”. By November 2025 the Arcadia name had been folded into MindsEye as its user-generated content layer.
Everywhere has never had a release date and remains unreleased as of 19 September 2026. Development on it began in 2016, first on Amazon Lumberyard and from November 2020 on Unreal Engine 5, and it reached an invite-only alpha in December 2023 and a builders beta in June 2024. It got no further.
Can You Still Buy and Play MindsEye?
Yes. As of 19 September 2026 MindsEye remains listed and purchasable on Steam at $34.99, discounted by 50 percent to $17.49, with Build a Rocket Boy credited as both developer and publisher.
No shutdown date has been announced for the game’s online components, and no delisting has been confirmed on any platform. The Blacklisted update was released on 28 April 2026, and no further content has been announced since. With the studio winding down and no publisher standing behind the game, buyers should not expect more patches.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Build a Rocket Boy Officially Closed?
Not by its own account. The company has made no public statement about closing as of 19 September 2026, though staff who left in the September 2026 round described the business as being wound up.
Who Is Leslie Benzies?
A Scottish game developer who was president of Rockstar North and a producer on the Grand Theft Auto series until 2016, then co-founded and led Build a Rocket Boy.
How Badly Was MindsEye Reviewed?
Metacritic scores were 37 on PC, 33 on Xbox Series X and S, and 28 on PlayStation 5, placing it among the worst-reviewed major releases of 2025.
Did PlayStation Refund MindsEye Buyers?
Yes. Sony approved refunds for digital PlayStation 5 purchases in June 2025, days after release, which it rarely does for a working store listing.
Was Everywhere Ever Released?
No. The platform stayed in testing from 2023 to 2024 and has never launched, and its Arcadia toolset was absorbed into MindsEye instead.
