What Killed Build a Rocket Boy: A 16-Month Autopsy

Build a Rocket Boy, the studio behind MindsEye, is closing for good, with employees announcing on LinkedIn that their time at the studio is "coming to an end." The company was owned by Leslie Benzies and Mark Gerhard—respectively, former president of Rockstar North and former CEO of Jagex. The shutdown came after numerous rounds of layoffs and marks the effective end of what might be the most publicly chaotic indie studio collapse in recent memory.

The story arc is brutal in its symmetry. MindsEye launched in mid-2025, and within days it became clear the studio was in freefall. MindsEye received extremely poor critical reception, making it among the worst-rated games released. This wasn't a middling launch that might recover with patches. This was a reputation event—a test of the market's patience with a high-profile founder, and the market failed him.

The Unraveling

What followed was less a managed decline and more a cascade. The studio laid off a significant portion of its workforce because leadership refused to support and listen to their employees. Dan Hawkins, a principal talent acquisition partner and HR operations manager, posted on LinkedIn that he would be staying with Build a Rocket Boy until "the very end," but was also looking for work, implying that the company is closing soon. That message, posted in September, was the de facto announcement—not a press release, but a farewell from someone tasked with hiring people the company could no longer keep.

The scale of the collapse shouldn't be understated. Benzies walked away from Rockstar North with a proven track record on some of the biggest franchises in gaming history. He secured backing, built infrastructure, and bet everything on MindsEye being something people wanted. It wasn't. And once it wasn't, the machinery that was supposed to sustain the company just stopped.

The Surveillance Scandal

If the disastrous launch was the breaking point, the Teramind scandal was the humiliation. Build A Rocket Boy installed Teramind on employee hardware without prior approval and used it to monitor keystrokes, record on-screen activity, and capture employee conversations via microphones. Although the software was reportedly removed after a collective grievance, the union says management has not disclosed what data was collected, where it was stored, or why it was deployed.

Lead cinematic animator Chris Wilson described Build a Rocket Boy's culture of secrecy and micromanaging negatively, noting that while the studio conceded to removing Teramind, serious questions remained about their actions. The legal action is being led by Build A Rocket Boy employees in partnership with the IWGB Game Workers Union, marking a second legal claim initiated by workers, with earlier concerns raised regarding the layoffs after MindsEye's failure.

This is the part that lingers: even after a catastrophic product failure, leadership's response was to surveil the people doing the work. Not to listen. Not to acknowledge. To watch.

The Real Story

What happened to Build a Rocket Boy isn't unique—studios crash all the time. What makes this one significant is that it exposes how even prestige pedigree and substantial funding can't shield a team from bad execution, worse judgment, and leadership that retreats into paranoia rather than responsibility. Multiple rounds of layoffs, a collective grievance led by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain, and accusations of crunch and unlawful employee monitoring make it fair to say that Build a Rocket Boy's journey has been a controversial one.

The MindsEye team had every structural advantage. They had a founder who shipped Grand Theft Auto V. They had significant backing. They had time. What they didn't have—what no amount of pedigree can guarantee—was the ability to respond to failure with anything other than blame-shifting, opacity, and control.

With the studio officially winding down, the real lesson isn't about whether indie games can compete at scale. It's about what happens when they collapse: the people who made them lose their jobs, the work disappears, and the leadership retreats to silence or lawyers. MindsEye will be forgotten as a footnote. Build a Rocket Boy's handling of its own people will be remembered as a case study in what not to do.