Build A Rocket Boy has reportedly laid off roughly 170 of its 250 employees, slashing nearly 70% of the workforce just as the studio promised a turnaround for its debut disaster, MindsEye.

This is the third major layoff wave in a year for the studio founded in 2016 by ex-Rockstar producer Leslie Benzies. Initial cuts hit over 100 staff shortly after MindsEye's dismal 2025 launch—one of Metacritic's worst-rated games of the year—followed by more in March 2026 alongside the closure of its French branch. Co-CEO Mark Gerhard announced the latest reductions via LinkedIn, sticking to his narrative of 'organized espionage and corporate sabotage' as the root cause, even embedding evidence in the game's Blacklist update.

The receipts tell a different story. Developers published an open letter decrying 'unbearable' crunch and poor communication. In April, the IWGB Game Workers Union launched legal action over unauthorized surveillance software on employee devices. Publisher IO Interactive washed its hands of MindsEye in March, returning rights after a failed PS5 launch and canceled Hitman crossover.

Affected staff confirmed the news on LinkedIn and Discord, with one digital marketing manager calling his tenure 'an absolute pleasure' amid the exodus. Community reactions on Reddit and X mix schadenfreude with exhaustion over yet another GTA-clone implosion.

Eighty souls remain to chase ambitions like the Everywhere user-generated platform. In this bloodbath, deflection won't debug the code—or the books.