MindsEye - A 3rd Person Shooter developed by Ex-GTA developers.

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Jace on ice said:
Kind of surprised they even bothered, they have to be in pre bankruptcy hearings right now considering this complete disaster is their first title.
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AFAIK, they promised patches, hotfixes and additional content. If they don't follow through, I'm sure there'd be worse consequences than bankruptcy. Even the Saints Row reboot was able to fulfill its season pass content before shitting the bed.
 
Former and current employees at BARB have written an open letter to the company, damning it for their mismanagement. / Archive

Open Letter to the Executive Leadership at Build A Rocket Boy​


October 10, 2025Blog, Campaigns


Employees and ex-employees at Build A Rocket Boy (BARB), together with the Game Workers Branch of the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB), are writing to address the longstanding disrespect and mistreatment of your staff. For years, you have expected them to adapt to your every whim, with those in disagreement being shut down or cast aside. We estimate a UK-majority of 250-300 workers across the company have now lost their livelihoods. These layoffs happened because you repeatedly refused to listen to your workforce’s years of experience, resulting in one of the worst video game launches this decade.

Here are just a few of the many issues we have faced under your management:

Lack of transparency and communication. You have consistently failed to effectively communicate with the workers whose expertise the company relies on. Information has been sparse and vague, with you often making radical changes to the way we worked with little or no input from those affected.

Unbearable levels of overtime. In the 4 months leading up to the launch of MindsEye, you implemented a mandatory 8 hours of overtime per week for every single employee. Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) was given at a rate of 7 hours back for every 8 hours worked, but many have still not been able to take this time off due to your continued requests for extra “high-priority” work, even after launch.

Disastrous handling of redundancies. We believe you have consistently mishandled the redundancy process, causing confusion and distress for all staff. Employees have received misinformation, been handed dismissal notices with the wrong notice periods, and been put in the wrong teams so that their performances were scored by the wrong people. These and other errors have potentially resulted in the wrongful dismissal of dozens of staff members.

These and many other issues, some of which have been made public already, have caused pain and stress for your employees. Our experience at the company has been one of burnout, job insecurity, health issues, and the failure of a game that many of us have put years of our lives into. BARB needs to change. CEOs need to take a backseat and allow the skilled people who remain at the company to forge the path ahead. We demand the following:

  1. A public apology for this mistreatment of employees and proper compensation for laid-off employees;
  1. The option for remaining employees on redundancy notice to either work their notice period or take Payment in Lieu of Notice (PILON);
  1. A concerted, meaningful, and documented effort to improve conditions and processes within the company, including the acknowledgement of the IWGB as a trade union;
  1. A commitment to use official external partners to action any future redundancies and prevent unfair treatment.
Mark Gerhard and Leslie Benzies, you often refer to your employees as “family”. But we ask you to consider; is this really how you treat your own?

In solidarity,

93 BARB Employees and Ex-Employees ︱ IWGB Game Workers
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The tired cat said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bH6l4UGm0lUSo, seems someones intended to make Minds Eye 2.0.
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Seems more like a no name studio trying to make a Temu John Wick, and it probably won't work out because it's third person and all of that "flashy" movement and shooting in the John Wick movies is a bunch of quick snap shooting.

Apparently a bunch of Mindseye devs have come out over the past week or two to discuss Mindseye being a shit show.

Open Letter to the Executive Leadership at Build A Rocket Boy​

October 10, 2025Blog, Campaigns
Employees and ex-employees at Build A Rocket Boy (BARB), together with the Game Workers Branch of the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB), are writing to address the longstanding disrespect and mistreatment of your staff. For years, you have expected them to adapt to your every whim, with those in disagreement being shut down or cast aside. We estimate a UK-majority of 250-300 workers across the company have now lost their livelihoods. These layoffs happened because you repeatedly refused to listen to your workforce’s years of experience, resulting in one of the worst video game launches this decade.

Here are just a few of the many issues we have faced under your management:

Lack of transparency and communication. You have consistently failed to effectively communicate with the workers whose expertise the company relies on. Information has been sparse and vague, with you often making radical changes to the way we worked with little or no input from those affected.

Unbearable levels of overtime. In the 4 months leading up to the launch of MindsEye, you implemented a mandatory 8 hours of overtime per week for every single employee. Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) was given at a rate of 7 hours back for every 8 hours worked, but many have still not been able to take this time off due to your continued requests for extra “high-priority” work, even after launch.

Disastrous handling of redundancies. We believe you have consistently mishandled the redundancy process, causing confusion and distress for all staff. Employees have received misinformation, been handed dismissal notices with the wrong notice periods, and been put in the wrong teams so that their performances were scored by the wrong people. These and other errors have potentially resulted in the wrongful dismissal of dozens of staff members.

These and many other issues, some of which have been made public already, have caused pain and stress for your employees. Our experience at the company has been one of burnout, job insecurity, health issues, and the failure of a game that many of us have put years of our lives into. BARB needs to change. CEOs need to take a backseat and allow the skilled people who remain at the company to forge the path ahead. We demand the following:

  1. A public apology for this mistreatment of employees and proper compensation for laid-off employees;
  1. The option for remaining employees on redundancy notice to either work their notice period or take Payment in Lieu of Notice (PILON);
  1. A concerted, meaningful, and documented effort to improve conditions and processes within the company, including the acknowledgement of the IWGB as a trade union;
  1. A commitment to use official external partners to action any future redundancies and prevent unfair treatment.
Mark Gerhard and Leslie Benzies, you often refer to your employees as “family”. But we ask you to consider; is this really how you treat your own?

In solidarity,

93 BARB Employees and Ex-Employees ︱ IWGB Game Workers
Click to expand...


Complaining about 8 hours of OT a week(that's it? 10 hours a week would at least mean 10 hour shifts) during the 4 months prior to launch.
Complaining about wrongful dismissals due to being assigned to the wrong teams so the wrong managers were scoring performance of employees... hey dumbshits, you're losing your jobs because the game was shit and the studio has no income. Not because of your performance scores.
Talking about how the union is going to work with management, and they're the force recognized workplace union in the game industry in the UK blah blah blah. Yeah that's great but how the fuck do you expect a company with no money due to producing a shit product to pay you? Unless your union magically conjures up a huge pile of cash for the studio, it's not going to matter in the end.
"God forbid anything like the layoffs happens in the future, but if it did, we have that collective bargaining power" Again, this does you zero good when the employer can't afford to keep paying you because they can't make any money due to a shitty product you helped produce.
 
p1138 said:
Talking about how the union is going to work with management, and they're the force recognized workplace union in the game industry in the UK blah blah blah. Yeah that's great but how the fuck do you expect a company with no money due to producing a shit product to pay you? Unless your union magically conjures up a huge pile of cash for the studio, it's not going to matter in the end.
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It'd probably be cheaper to just apply for better work.
 
The tired cat said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bH6l4UGm0lUSo, seems someones intended to make Minds Eye 2.0.
Click to expand...
this looks infinitely better than Mindseye, it doesn't look particularly great or anything, but its knockoff Max Payne (with Wick Moves), so in the very least you could run and gun and turn your brain off, plenty of those moves looked pretty slick.

compare this to the shooting in mindseye and its night and day.
 
Zenos Yae Viator said:
this looks infinitely better than Mindseye, it doesn't look particularly great or anything, but its knockoff Max Payne (with Wick Moves), so in the very least you could run and gun and turn your brain off, plenty of those moves looked pretty slick.

compare this to the shooting in mindseye and its night and day.
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I mean, still looks like a huge scam like Minds Eye with the buggy textures, cars glitching an etc.
 
The tired cat said:
I mean, still looks like a huge scam like Minds Eye with the buggy textures, cars glitching an etc.
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I mean sure? It's also from some no-name studio that is trying to put together a game that relies entirely on the combat being worth a shit, and likely won't meet anyone's expectations. It's also clearly an alpha and says so, mindseye was a "completed product" sold at retail as being a completed product. If all it takes to compare anything to mindseye is being an alpha, then that's footage from any game in the industry at that point.

The bigger takeaway is that the big mindseye game with an industry name behind the studio that got well over 100 million dollars in investment couldn't produce a finished product that looks marginally better than this no name studio's alpha footage of their John Wish.com game.
 
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