Studio behind MindsEye keeps cutting jobs, trying to survive

Studio Build a Rocket Boy is once again laying off employees. Reportedly up to 170 people have lost their jobs in this new layoff wave.

This is already their third round of layoffs in a year, the same studio behind the unsuccessful game MindsEye. The focus now is on the studio falling apart after the game’s poor launch.

Around 170 employees have been laid off, although this is not officially confirmed according to sources. The studio had already gone through massive layoffs right after the 2025 launch, and had another wave earlier this year.

The employee count once went from over 800, to 240, with a goal to drop to around 100 people. The game was poorly received by both critics and players, with a very low player count, for example around 11 players on Steam. In short, a massive downsizing of the studio after the failure of one game.

The studio is still trying to save the game through various updates, and is currently working on a platform for user-generated content.
But a major update, the so-called blacklist, didn’t succeed at all. The game still basically has no audience.
This means the project has no clear direction and is trying to survive, BUT FORCED!

MindsEye is an ambitious project by former Rockstar developers, part of the broader Everywhere platform. Problems started when the launch was catastrophic, with negative reviews and accusations of sabotage, although there is no evidence. Even the collaboration with IO Interactive was cut. The studio has now basically started shrinking in an attempt to survive.

This shows how quickly a project can collapse even if it’s an AAA project. When investments are huge and management is bad, collapse happens. And more layoffs across the gaming industry are becoming common. The result is a real risk that the project completely dies, or that it loses enough people to recover.

Now the question is... can they even recover at all? This looks more like damage control than a real comeback. If the trend continues, there’s a real chance the studio never gets the project back on its feet.