Game workers protested outside MindsEye studio Build a Rocket Boy as it held an ‘extravagant playtest’ for fans

Former employees protested outside the office of MindsEye studio Build a Rocket Boy on Saturday as the company held a playtest for fans.

The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) protested outside the studio’s headquarters in Leith, Scotland, claiming that the “all-expenses-paid playtest event” was seeing fans “take on testing duties usually carried out by professional staff”, at a studio where it estimates more than 400 employees have been laid off.

In a statement to journalist Chris Bratt, IWGB Game Workers Branch Chair said: “This extravagant playtest event is a waste of money, and a kick in the teeth for the fired workers who are seeing fans brought in to do jobs that would otherwise have been theirs.”

MindsEye was released in June 2025, landing a 39 Metacritic score on PC and a 29 on PS5, making it the worst-rated game of last year.

During one of a series of layoffs following the game’s disastrous launch, co-CEO Mark Gerhard suggested that one of the main reasons behind MindsEye’s commercial failure was “criminal activity” including “organised espionage and corporate sabotage”.

The studio then released a DLC mission for the game called Blacklisted, which it said would “share some of the evidence of the sabotage with the community”, but its release seemingly didn’t have much impact on public opinion or the fate of the game.

Speaking at the protest – which included former members of both Build a Rocket Boy and Rockstar – former employee Isaac Hudd condemned Gerhard and fellow co-CEO, former Grand Theft Auto 3-5 producer Leslie Benzies, for laying off the majority of the studio’s staff while claiming others were at fault.

“We’re here today because all of us believe in one thing, that game workers deserve to be treated with respect,” Hudd said. “The two CEOs in this building will likely say they agree, but their actions have shown otherwise.

“A little over a year ago, after the most brutal crunch, Build a Rocket Boy released MindsEye to the world. As many in the lower levels of the company predicted, it crashed and burned, resulting in Metacritic’s worst game of 2025.

“Instead of taking responsibility, instead of reassuring or commiserating with the people who made their game, the co-CEOs of this company went silent. On their eventual return, they announced layoffs.

“What followed was three months of lies, veiled threats and ultimately the callous removal of at least 250 employees. But they didn’t stop there.”

Hudd continued, criticising the studio’s conspiracy-fuelling DLC, its subsequent further redundancies, its decision to host the expenses-paid fan playtest and its decision to offer one fan a job instead of giving it to a recently laid off employee.

“In the months after, Build a Rocket Boy attempted to recover their image with a leather-clad sexist stereotype in the form of a new mission, Blacklisted,” he explained. “This too received deserved scorn from the public.

“The CEOs were more interested in finding fake saboteurs – they were too busy to look in the mirror and realise it was them all along. In their witch hunt they secretly installed privacy-invading monitoring software on their employees’ PCs.

“They sat by and allowed an entire branch of their company and brand to go bankrupt, hoping the government there would clean up their mess. They’ve now removed another half of the company, and instead of redundant community managers, they hired a fan from their Discord.

“And now they’ve flown in more of them, on BARB’s ever-dwindling dime, to playtest an online game that could be played from anywhere. It would be a nice gesture in most companies, but after the lies, the fear, the stress and ignoring damned near every attempt to make things right from their ex-employees, it’s nothing more than a kick in the teeth to those they’ve abandoned.

“We’re here to show them that jobless does not mean toothless. By taking away our livelihoods, they gave us something they never planned on – motivation, fury. In my instance, I found the person I love from this hell, and I’m not letting any of this go.

“We, alongside the IWGB, are fighting to show not just BARB, not just Rockstar, but every games company in the UK, that mistreatment will get you nowhere, and it is time for a new world, one of worker solidarity.”