MindsEye is one of the biggest gaming flops this year. But the developer's CEO seems to blame everyone but himself for this.
When MindsEye was announced, there seemed to be a lot of hype for the game. A futuristic open-world action-adventure à la GTA, that's also brought to life by GTA's former main producer Leslie Benzies, sounded promising. But sadly, Build A Rocket Boy'sdebut game turned out to be a huge flop.
The game is riddled with bugs, and everything from the story to the gameplay is lackluster and poorly designed. IT could have been better – or even good – given more development time.
Benzies, on the other hand, has his own reasons on why the game is so badly received. Instead of owning up to the fact that the studio produced a bad game, he blames internal and external sabotage. Even before the games' release, co-CEO Mark Gerhard claimed that some articles and spambots were paid to ruin the games' reputation before its release.
Neither Benzies nor Gerhard have given examples or evidence of any sabotage that could have occurred. To people who played the game, this claim also seems a bit odd, since it didn't need saboteurs at all – the game speaks for itself after all.
Major Layoffs At Build A Rocket Boy
Following the games' bad release, the studio is now facing mass layoffs. In late June, BARB began a 45-day consultancy, which is mandatory whenever a company plans to lay off over 100 employees.
Currently, the studio has around 300 employees in the UK and 200 abroad. That would mean that a significant amount of BARB'semployees are at risk of losing their jobs.
It's definitely sad to see BARB follow in the footsteps of Cyberpunk 2077 in terms of a bad launch. Sony even allowed for the MindsEye to be refunded, due to its horrible release state – something that also happened to Cyberpunk2077. Now, the employees are taking the fall and the future of this brand-new studio is uncertain.
MindsEye Will Relaunch?
Benzies is not giving up on MindsEye just yet. While pointing fingers and planning layoffs, he also wants to relaunch the title. This relaunch is supposed to fix technical issues while enhancing gameplay.
The aforementioned Cyberpunk 2077 had a successful "relaunch". Continuous updates have improved the game so much that it can now even be considered to be a great experience. But whether MindsEye can achieve the same is questionable, given the studio's current circumstances.
The whole situation around Build A Rocket Boy screams bad practice. Blaming others and releasing an unfinished game just to "fix it later" don't reflect well on the new studio's reputation – even if the game does improve eventually.