MindsEye studio lays off more staff, CEO blames 'criminal activity' for game's failure

2 hours ago 2

Published Mar 5, 2026, 12:51 PM EST

Studio co-CEO alleges 'espionage and corporate sabotage' doomed MindsEye's launch

MindsEye protagonist Jacob Diaz looking into the camera.

The saga of MindsEye continues to get weirder. The third-person action game from studio Build a Rocket Boy had a very weird and troubled launch last June, headlined by co-CEO Mark Gerhard saying the negative reception to the game was a targeted campaign "100 percent" being funded by an ominous outsider. Some players were able to receive refunds for their purchase of the bug-filled game, while Build a Rocket Boy's attempts at damage control failed spectacularly. The studio was hit with layoffs shortly after launch, and the remaining developers put out a sizable update last month in an attempt to turn the game around and bring players back. (It hasn't, going by public player count numbers on Steam; MindsEye's highest concurrent peak player count was 80 players in the month since the update.)

All of this brings us to the present moment. Build a Rocket Boy is once again going through a round of layoffs, with Gerhard once again pointing to conspiracies as why MindsEye failed.

In a message posted to LinkedIn by the studio on Wednesday, Gerhard took responsibility for the redundancies before immediately pointing to how MindsEye's launch was "affected by factors beyond normal operational challenges and a competitive environment." Those factors, presumably, being the smear campaign Gerhard alleged was waged against Build a Rocket Boy.

Gerhard noted how the studio has been working with legal teams to "investigate the criminal activity that took place around our launch." According to Gerhard, that investigation "has now resulted in overwhelming evidence of organised espionage and corporate sabotage affecting MindsEye. Because this matter is moving toward prosecution, we cannot share the full details publicly yet."

In February, Insider Gaming reported that Gerhard claimed in an internal meeting that they "caught the guys" behind the smear campaign. He allegedly called them "a bunch of gangsters" and said they "will all be served in person, criminal complaints, shortly." One of the people Gerhard alleges is against him is the YouTuber Cyber Boi, who was issued a cease and desist demand by Build a Rocket Boy as a result of a video that claimed MindsEye director Leslie Benzies was in the Epstein files.

So, to answer the question, "What the hell is happening with MindsEye right now?" — turns out a helluva lot is going on at MindsEye developer Build a Rocket Boy between unfortunate layoffs, alleged "criminal activity" at the studio, and a recent update.

All of this for a game that, by all accounts, is pretty terrible.

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