The developer behind one of last year’s most poorly received titles, MindsEye, is reportedly being hit with an additional round of redundancies and layoffs. This news comes via Kotaku, marking the third time since the release of the game that developer Build A Rocket Boy has gone through layoffs in the past year. While Build a Rocket Boy has yet to comment publicly on this news, Kotaku has reported that sources close to the studio have indicated that around 170 members of staff are impacted, with only 80 members of the studio still remaining.
Several members of Build A Rocket Boy have been noticed referencing “the latest redundancies” at the studio via LinkedIn posts, with many among those who have been unfortunately laid off from the studio. This includes senior game designer James Tyler, audio designer Tom Cross, and many others. Several members of the community team have also stated publicly that they will no longer be working with Build A Rocket Boy, making this announcement via the Mindseye Official Discord.
Mindseye was released on June 10 to critical panning (which even I saw coming), with the game suffering from a significant amount of bugs and glitches, apart from featuring some lackluster gameplay and narrative, and an open world that, upon launch, was not actually open. This was met with the company experiencing significant layoffs the following month. That in turn was met with an open letter to the company’s management, calling for change while acknowledging the realities of its launch, positioned in the letter as “one of the worst video game launches this decade.” A second round of layoffs occurred in March of this year.
This newest round of redundancies comes only a week after the release of Mindseye‘s official ‘Blacklisted’ update. This is a new mission added to the game via the game’s user-generated content platform Arcadia. This update was stated by the company to be part of the title’s comeback, and was supposed to showcase proof supporting the claims made by management that the disastrous launch was a product of sabotage and not, you know, just releasing a bad game
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