{"id":34001,"date":"2026-03-06T13:16:42","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T05:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=34001"},"modified":"2026-03-06T13:16:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T05:16:42","slug":"mindseye-studio-lays-off-more-staff-ceo-blames-criminal-activity-for-games-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=34001","title":{"rendered":"MindsEye studio lays off more staff, CEO blames &#8216;criminal activity&#8217; for game&#8217;s failure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/MindsEye-Jacob-Diaz.png\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The saga of <em>MindsEye<\/em> 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 &#8220;100 percent&#8221; 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&#8217;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&#8217;t, going by public player count numbers on Steam; <em>MindsEye<\/em>&#8216;s highest concurrent peak player count was 80 players in the month since the update.)<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- No AdsNinja v10 Client! --><!-- No AdsNinja v10 Client! --><\/p>\n<p>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 <em>MindsEye<\/em> failed.<\/p>\n<p>In a message posted to LinkedIn by the studio on Wednesday, Gerhard took responsibility for the redundancies before immediately pointing to how <em>MindsEye<\/em>&#8216;s launch was &#8220;affected by factors beyond normal operational challenges and a competitive environment.&#8221; Those factors, presumably, being the smear campaign Gerhard alleged was waged against Build a Rocket Boy.<\/p>\n<p>Gerhard noted how the studio has been working with legal teams to &#8220;investigate the criminal activity that took place around our launch.&#8221; According to Gerhard, that investigation &#8220;has now resulted in overwhelming evidence of organised espionage and corporate sabotage affecting <em>MindsEye<\/em>. Because this matter is moving toward prosecution, we cannot share the full details publicly yet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In February, Insider Gaming reported that Gerhard claimed in an internal meeting that they &#8220;caught the guys&#8221; behind the smear campaign. He allegedly called them &#8220;a bunch of gangsters&#8221; and said they &#8220;will all be served in person, criminal complaints, shortly.&#8221; 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 <em>MindsEye<\/em> director Leslie Benzies was in the Epstein files. <\/p>\n<p>So, to answer the question, &#8220;What the hell is happening with <em>MindsEye<\/em> right now?&#8221; \u2014 turns out a helluva lot is going on at <em>MindsEye<\/em> developer Build a Rocket Boy between unfortunate layoffs, alleged &#8220;criminal activity&#8221; at the studio, and a recent update.<\/p>\n<p>All of this for a game that, by all accounts, is pretty terrible.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/mindseye-layoffs-blamed-on-criminal-activities\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[8289,17377,5668,3265,1712,321,9386,17250,339,2770],"class_list":["post-34001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-activity","tag-blames","tag-ceo","tag-criminal","tag-failure","tag-games","tag-lays","tag-mindseye","tag-staff","tag-studio","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}