MindsEye studio Build a Rocket Boy has reportedly started mass layoff proceedings
More than 100 staff could be affected, it’s been suggested
Build a Rocket Boy, the studio behind MindsEye, has reportedly started the process of laying off numerous staff.
According to a report at IGN, which cites studio sources speaking under anonymity, the Edinburgh-based developer has started a 45-day consultation process with staff today.
In UK law, if a company is planning to make fewer than 20 employees redundant, it doesn’t have to start a consultation process. If it plans to lay off between 20 and 99 staff, it has to start a consultation period at least 30 days before any dismissals take effect.
If the company is planning to lay off 100 or more staff, however, it has to have a consultation period of at least 45 days. Given that this is reportedly the length of consultation period that Build a Rocket Boy has started, it appears that at least 100 of its estimated 300 UK-based employees could be facing redundancy (the studio also has 200 further staff overseas).
Since the release of MindsEye on June 10, social media has been flooded with videos of the game’s technical issues and bugs. The situation has deteriorated to the extent that PlayStation has been refunding multiple players, a rare occurrence that previously took place during the troubled launch of Cyberpunk 2077, before it was pulled from sale entirely.
The studio said it was “heartbroken” during an apology released last earlier this month, saying it was ” fully committed to ensuring all our players have a great experience”.
Further reading
The game’s Metacritic score currently stands at 38 for the PC version and just 28 for the PS5 version, making it the lowest rated game on Metacritic so far this year and significantly lower than any game on Metacritic last year too.
It isn’t faring much better on Steam, where user ratings are currently listed as ‘Mostly Negative’. Of the 1,833 user reviews submitted for the game so far, 37% are marked as positive.
In an interview with VGC earlier this month before the game’s release, MindsEye assistant game director Adam Whiting told us that while Build a Rocket Boy was working on both Everywhere and MindsEye, most of the staff were focused on the latter.
“Whilst we’ve got a big development team, and part of the team was focused on Everywhere for a while, probably a larger part was always focused on MindsEye,” Whiting said.
“A game of this kind of quality and scale needs a lot of artists, needs a lot of coders, needs a lot of everything, right? Needs a lot of love.”
