Build A Rocket Boy, the Edinburgh studio behind the troubled shooter MindsEye, has confirmed another round of job cuts, with multiple staff posting redundancy notices on LinkedIn on September 16, 2026. GamesIndustry.biz reported the same day that the Scottish developer has entered “another phase of workforce reductions,” and later confirmed that administrators were formally appointed to the company in September 2026, while TweakTown reported that at least 170 employees were affected by this final wave of cuts. The cuts land 15 months after MindsEye’s disastrous June 2025 launch and cap off more than a year of shrinking headcount, worker unrest, and a studio leadership that has repeatedly blamed outside sabotage for its troubles.
For an industry still absorbing the shock of the 2023-2024 layoff wave, Build A Rocket Boy’s collapse is a case study in what happens when a heavily funded, high-profile studio bets everything on a single unproven title. This is a breakdown of what has been confirmed, what remains uncertain, and what the pattern of cuts says about the wider games business heading into 2027.
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What Happened: Build A Rocket Boy’s Latest Round of Cuts
The September 2026 layoffs surfaced first through employee posts on LinkedIn rather than an official company announcement, according to GamesIndustry.biz. The outlet’s report, titled “MindsEye developers report new round of layoffs at Build A Rocket Boy,” describes the move as part of a longer pattern of workforce reductions stretching back to shortly after MindsEye’s release. Video Games Chronicle characterized the round as different in kind from earlier cuts, reporting that “the actual company appears to be closing down too,” rather than simply trimming specific teams.
Compounding the picture, a recruitment representative at the studio was quoted in regional gaming press describing preparations for the company’s “final closure,” language that goes beyond a typical restructuring announcement. Build A Rocket Boy has not published a formal statement addressing the September round at the time of writing, continuing a pattern where confirmation of cuts has repeatedly come from affected staff on social media rather than from the company itself.
Early reports lacked a precise headcount figure for the September round, but that gap has since narrowed: TweakTown reported that at least 170 employees were affected by what is now described as the final wave of cuts, and GamesIndustry.biz subsequently confirmed that administrators were appointed to the company in September 2026. Taken together, those two data points move the story from informal LinkedIn posts to a formal insolvency proceeding, consistent with a company in the final stages of unwinding rather than one still tracking department-by-department reductions.
A Timeline of Layoffs: From 500 Staff to Near Collapse
Build A Rocket Boy’s headcount has been in near-continuous decline since MindsEye shipped. The Verge reported the studio employed around 500 people heading into the June 2025 launch, and Eurogamer reported that the first cuts arrived just weeks after that launch, with GamesIndustry.biz putting the initial figure at roughly 300 staff facing redundancy as early as June 2025. What followed was a series of escalating cuts across five separate reported rounds, tracked below using the figures each outlet published at the time.
| Period | Reported Cuts | Headcount After | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 2025 (post-launch) | ~100 staff at risk | ~400 (from ~500) | The Verge, ComicBook |
| 2025 (cumulative) | ~300 developers let go | Not specified | GamesIndustry.biz |
| March 2026 | Further layoffs, no figure given | Not specified | IGN, Game Developer |
| May 2026 | ~170 staff | ~80 remaining | GamesIndustry.biz, GameWorld Observer, Gamereactor |
| June 2025-July 2026 (cumulative) | Est. 250-300 workers | Not specified | Game Developer (IWGB union estimate) |
| September 2026 | New round, no figure confirmed | Studio reportedly winding down | GamesIndustry.biz, Video Games Chronicle |
GameWorld Observer summed up the trajectory bluntly, reporting in May 2026 that the studio’s staff was “now ten times smaller than it was during its peak,” a figure corroborated by GameRant, which separately reported that roughly 170 developers were cut that same month, leaving the studio with around 80 staff. UK outlet Shattered has grouped the cuts differently, describing three broader contraction waves since June 2025 rather than five discrete rounds, but even accounting for that overlap and imprecision between outlets’ figures, the direction is unambiguous: a studio that once employed roughly 500 people has spent 15 months shedding staff in wave after wave, with September’s round appearing to be the terminal one.
MindsEye’s Catastrophic Launch: The Numbers Behind the Failure
MindsEye launched on PC and consoles on June 10, 2025, according to ComicBook, positioning it as Build A Rocket Boy’s debut commercial release after years of development. The game was frequently pitched by observers as a spiritual successor to the open-world action games its founders had worked on at Rockstar North, but the reception could not have been further from that comparison.
| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Metacritic critic score | 37/100 | TechTimes |
| Metacritic user score | 2.5/10 | TechTimes |
| Reception ranking | “Worst-reviewed mainstream game of the year” | TechTimes |
| Refund response | Mass refunds issued by both Sony and Epic | TechTimes |
| Comparable precedent cited | Rare intervention, previously associated with Cyberpunk 2077’s 2020 launch | TechTimes |
The scale of the refund response is arguably the single most damaging data point in the entire saga. Platform-initiated mass refunds are not something Sony or Epic extend lightly, since they cut directly into first-week revenue and signal to the market that a title’s problems go beyond ordinary post-launch bugs. TechTimes noted that the last comparably visible platform intervention of this kind followed Cyberpunk 2077’s chaotic December 2020 launch, when Sony temporarily pulled the game from the PlayStation Store entirely. Being placed in the same sentence as that episode, even five years later, is not a comparison any studio wants attached to its first release.
Who Are Leslie Benzies and Mark Gerhard?
Build A Rocket Boy was founded and is owned by Leslie Benzies and Mark Gerhard, according to reporting from Video Games Chronicle and Ground News. Benzies previously served as president of Rockstar North, the studio behind the Grand Theft Auto series, before departing under a well-documented and contentious split. Gerhard has served as the company’s CEO through the MindsEye launch and the subsequent layoffs, and he is the executive most frequently quoted in coverage of the studio’s decline.
The Rockstar pedigree mattered enormously to how MindsEye was marketed and anticipated ahead of launch. It also sharpened the criticism once the game underperformed, since expectations had been set by association with one of the most commercially successful studios in gaming history rather than by MindsEye’s own untested team.
The “Corporate Sabotage” Claims Explained
Rather than fully attributing MindsEye’s failure to development or design shortcomings, Gerhard has repeatedly pointed to what he describes as external interference. IGN reported in March 2026 that Gerhard “doubled down” on claims of “organised espionage and corporate sabotage” while personally confirming that round as the studio’s second major wave of layoffs, a framing that Game Developer also noted the studio maintained, describing Build A Rocket Boy as a company that “claims it has fallen victim to corporate sabotage.”
According to the quotes obtained by Kotaku during that same March 2026 announcement, Gerhard stated: “Over the past months we have been working with external partners and legal advisors to investigate the criminal activity that took place around our launch.” No outlet in this reporting has published findings from that investigation, named a specific perpetrator, or independently corroborated the sabotage allegation. The claim remains an assertion from studio leadership rather than a verified finding, and it has not been accepted uncritically by the trade press covering the story.
Worker Backlash: Union Protests and an Open Letter
The financial and reputational fallout from MindsEye has been matched by growing internal dissent. Game Developer reported that employees, organized through the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), staged a protest in July 2026 timed to an “all-expenses-paid” fan event the studio was funding even as it continued cutting staff. The union’s statement, cited by Game Developer, put the cumulative toll at “an estimated 250-300 workers” laid off since June 2025 and called holding the event under those circumstances “a kick in the teeth,” a range the BBC separately reported had held steady at 250-300 workers laid off in total by September 2026.
That protest followed an earlier flashpoint reported via the BBC in October 2025, in which employees signed an open letter demanding apologies from both Benzies and Gerhard over what they characterized as mismanagement. TechTimes’ summary of that reporting links the letter directly to the layoff rounds that followed. Between the union statement and the earlier letter, the picture that emerges is one of sustained internal conflict running in parallel with the external commercial failure, rather than a single isolated dispute. It echoes union pressure seen elsewhere in the industry, including the CWA-organized rallies against Xbox studio layoffs earlier in 2026.
What Studio Leadership Has Said
Build A Rocket Boy’s public statements have followed a consistent pattern: brief, procedural language acknowledging cuts without addressing the scale or root causes in depth. Following the June 2025 round, the studio told IGN and The Verge: “We can confirm that we have made the difficult choice to inform our dedicated team about some internal adjustments at Build A Rocket Boy.” (The Verge)
By the March 2026 round, Gerhard’s own language had shifted to something more personal and less procedural. Speaking about that announcement, he said: “This is a deeply painful decision.” (Kotaku) The same statement included his claim about ongoing legal and external investigations into what he described as criminal activity tied to the launch: “Over the past months we have been working with external partners and legal advisors to investigate the criminal activity that took place around our launch.” (Kotaku)
Notably, no equivalent public statement from Gerhard personally has surfaced regarding the September 2026 round, but the company’s formal position became clearer through other channels: GamesIndustry.biz reported that administrators were appointed to Build A Rocket Boy in September 2026, a legal step that effectively confirms the wind-down without requiring a leadership statement. That silence from Gerhard himself, following a year of increasingly defensive public comments, is itself being read by some outlets as a signal that informal messaging has given way to a formal insolvency process.
Market Impact: What This Means for the UK Games Industry
Build A Rocket Boy’s collapse adds another data point to a UK games sector that has already absorbed years of contraction. Edinburgh, where the studio is based, has built a reputation as a games development hub partly on the strength of Rockstar North’s legacy, and a high-profile failure from a studio founded by that legacy’s own former leadership carries outsized symbolic weight locally, even before accounting for the direct job losses.
The broader market signal is arguably more important than the studio-specific one. Build A Rocket Boy reportedly raised substantial capital on the strength of its founders’ pedigree well before MindsEye had proven itself commercially, and none of the reporting reviewed here surfaces a rescue financing round, acquisition offer, or restructuring deal materializing once the game failed. That absence suggests investors and potential acquirers have treated the studio’s problems as too deep-rooted to be worth intervening in, a signal that could make it harder for other founder-led studios trading on individual reputations rather than shipped track records to raise money on similar terms going forward.
It also lands at a moment when the wider industry is still digesting a multi-year layoff cycle that has touched publishers of every size, from major platform holders trimming live-service bets to independent studios closing outright after single-game failures. Build A Rocket Boy’s trajectory, from roughly 500 staff to a company reportedly preparing for “final closure,” compresses that broader pattern into an unusually fast and public timeline.
Historical Context: How MindsEye’s Collapse Compares
High-profile launch failures followed by studio-level consequences are not new to this console generation, though few have combined every element seen with Build A Rocket Boy: a pedigree-driven marketing narrative, platform-level mass refunds, a public sabotage allegation from leadership, and an open union protest, all within the same 15-month window.
Cyberpunk 2077’s December 2020 launch remains the reference point the games press keeps returning to, and TechTimes explicitly drew that line when covering MindsEye’s refund wave. The key difference is durability: CD Projekt Red weathered its launch crisis and rebuilt the game’s reputation over several years, in part because the publisher had the balance sheet and back catalog to absorb the hit. Build A Rocket Boy, as a single-title studio without an established portfolio to fall back on, has not had that cushion, and the layoff cadence documented above shows a company that never regained enough revenue or investor confidence to stabilize after its one release stumbled, a fate similar to what recently befell Moss developer Polyarc Games after more than a decade in business.
Competitive Comparison: Founder Pedigree vs. Shipped Track Record
Part of what makes Build A Rocket Boy’s story notable within the gaming cluster is the gap between the studio’s pre-launch narrative and its post-launch reality. Founder pedigree from Rockstar North created outsized expectations and, by extension, outsized funding and hiring, well ahead of any commercial proof point. When the debut title underperformed as severely as MindsEye did, the studio had scaled its headcount to a level that a single failed launch could not sustain.
That stands in contrast to studios that scale headcount in step with shipped, revenue-generating titles, or that diversify across multiple smaller releases rather than betting the company on one large debut. The lesson reporters and analysts covering this story keep circling back to is less about MindsEye’s specific design choices and more about the risk of building a large organization around unproven output, regardless of who is leading it.
Predictions: What Comes Next for Build A Rocket Boy
- A formal closure announcement is likely within weeks. The “final closure” language attributed to the studio’s own recruitment staff, combined with the absence of any company statement disputing it, points toward an official wind-down confirmation rather than a reversal.
- No rescue acquisition appears imminent. None of the reporting reviewed here surfaces a prospective buyer, publisher partner, or investor stepping in, and the reputational damage from the sabotage claims and union disputes makes a clean acquisition less attractive to potential suitors.
- Scrutiny of founder-led “pedigree studios” will intensify. Investors and publishers evaluating new studios built around veteran names from major franchises are likely to demand more concrete production milestones before committing large budgets, given how quickly Build A Rocket Boy’s headcount collapsed after a single failed launch.
- The sabotage investigation, if it produces findings, will draw significant press attention. Gerhard’s claim of engaging “external partners and legal advisors” sets an expectation that some public accounting will eventually follow, even if the studio itself no longer exists in its current form by then.
- MindsEye’s intellectual property will likely sit dormant rather than being revived quickly. Given the game’s reception and refund history, a near-term sequel or relaunch from a new owner is unlikely to be a priority for any party that might acquire the studio’s remaining assets.
Lessons for Studios, Publishers, and Investors
The Build A Rocket Boy story offers a fairly stark set of takeaways for anyone financing or building game studios in 2026. First, marketing a studio’s credibility around founders’ past work at other companies does not substitute for a studio’s own shipped, tested output, particularly at AAA scope and budget. Second, when a debut title’s reception is bad enough to trigger platform-level refund interventions from both Sony and Epic simultaneously, the resulting damage compounds quickly through cancellations, refunds, and reputational contagion that hiring freezes alone cannot offset. Third, public statements that shift blame toward external sabotage, without independently verified findings to back them up, risk deepening rather than repairing trust with both the workforce and the audience.
For workers, the union activity documented by Game Developer and the earlier open letter reported via the BBC suggest that organizing efforts are becoming a more visible feature of how game industry layoffs play out publicly, rather than staying confined to internal channels or quiet departures.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Build A Rocket Boy?
Build A Rocket Boy is an Edinburgh, Scotland-based game studio founded and owned by Leslie Benzies, the former president of Rockstar North, and Mark Gerhard, who has served as the company’s CEO. Its debut commercial release was MindsEye.
What is MindsEye and when did it launch?
MindsEye is Build A Rocket Boy’s first major title, an action game that launched on PC and consoles on June 10, 2025, according to ComicBook. It was widely anticipated due to its founders’ Rockstar North background before receiving a critically and commercially poor reception.
How many people has Build A Rocket Boy laid off since 2025?
Reported figures vary by round and outlet, but Game Developer cited an IWGB union estimate of 250-300 workers laid off between June 2025 and July 2026 — a range the BBC later reported had held at 250-300 by September 2026 — following a starting headcount of roughly 500 reported by The Verge. TweakTown reported that at least 170 employees were affected by the final round of cuts in September 2026, around the same time GamesIndustry.biz confirmed administrators had been appointed to the company.
Is Build A Rocket Boy shutting down completely?
As of September 2026, the studio has not issued its own closure announcement, but GamesIndustry.biz reported that administrators were formally appointed to Build A Rocket Boy that same month, while Video Games Chronicle, TweakTown, and regional gaming press report that the company appears to be winding down, with a recruitment representative reportedly describing preparations for “final closure” and TweakTown citing at least 170 employees affected by the final cuts.
What was MindsEye’s Metacritic score?
According to TechTimes, MindsEye received a Metacritic critic score of 37 out of 100 and a user score of 2.5 out of 10, which the outlet described as the worst-reviewed mainstream game of the year.
Did Sony and Epic really issue refunds for MindsEye?
Yes. TechTimes reported that both Sony and Epic issued mass refunds for MindsEye, describing it as a rare platform-level intervention previously associated with Cyberpunk 2077’s troubled 2020 launch.
What are the “corporate sabotage” claims about?
CEO Mark Gerhard has publicly claimed the studio was targeted by “organised espionage and corporate sabotage” tied to MindsEye’s launch, according to IGN, and said the company was working with “external partners and legal advisors to investigate the criminal activity that took place around our launch,” per Kotaku. No outlet has reported independently verified findings supporting this claim.
What happens to MindsEye if the studio closes?
None of the current reporting identifies a buyer or new owner for MindsEye’s intellectual property, meaning that if Build A Rocket Boy closes without a sale of its assets, the game’s future updates and any potential sequel would likely be indefinitely shelved.
