Reports suggest around 80 employees left at MindsEye developer following rounds of redundancies.
An undisclosed number of employees have reportedly been laid off from MindsEye developer Build a Rocket Boy. Kotaku reports that 170 employees were let go, leaving about 80 staff at the studio. Affected roles include technical level design, audio design, and QA. Members of BARB's social media team also confirmed on the developer's Discord server that they were affected by the layoffs. GamesIndustry.biz has contacted Build a Rocket Boy for confirmation on the number of employees affected. This is the third round of layoffs in the past year, along with the reported closure of BARB France in March. The Montpellier studio opened in 2022. Last month, when responding to the end of BARB's publishing deal with IOI Partners, CEO Mark Gerhard said layoffs were not over. The most recent layoffs occurred in March, which Gerhard attributed to "organised espionage and corporate sabotage" during the launch of MindsEye. "Some people had their hands on the scale and deliberately tried to shape a negative narrative around the product so it didn't get a fair chance," he said. "It didn't get to find its community. It didn't get a chance to be iterated on, as would be typical for these things." This led to "the brutal and heartbreaking step of reducing the size of the studio once again to ensure the long-term future of the company and the projects [it continues] to build." BARB has since initiated a "reset" and a "new phase of ongoing development" for MindsEye to revitalise the game, which received negative feedback at launch due to bugs and performance issues. About 300 UK-based employees were laid off from BARB in July 2025, following confirmation from the developer that layoffs occurred shortly after the game's launch.
