Build a Rocket Boy Reportedly Closing: What We Know About MindsEye Studio's Collapse

This article relies on reporting from Kotaku and IGN, employee statements, and public filings. Build a Rocket Boy has not responded to requests for comment.

On September 16, 2026, the news did not arrive through a press release. It arrived through LinkedIn.

One by one, employees of Build a Rocket Boy, the Edinburgh-based studio behind the troubled shooter MindsEye, began announcing that they had been made redundant. Among them was Dan Hawkins, the studio's HR lead, who wrote that he would see the company "through till the very end." The phrasing carried a weight that no corporate statement could match. It suggested not another round of cuts, but a conclusion.

The company itself has said nothing.

As of this writing, Build a Rocket Boy has issued no public comment on the layoffs or on the growing number of reports describing a permanent shutdown. Its listing on UK Companies House still reads "active," with co-founders Leslie Benzies and Mark Gerhard listed as directors. What follows is an attempt to separate what is known from what is assumed, because in this case the gap between the two is the story.

The Layoffs That Sparked the Story

The September 16 wave of LinkedIn posts was not the first sign of trouble at Build a Rocket Boy (BARB), but it was the most public. Multiple employees confirmed they had received redundancy notices, and Hawkins' message was quickly read across the industry as an obituary in progress.

The reporter who broke the story as a shutdown was Kotaku, which cited sources familiar with the situation in stating that BARB is permanently closing. That report has since circulated widely, but it remains unconfirmed by the studio.

A conflicting account complicates the picture. A source told IGN that the company may not be dissolved even if every member of staff is let go. This is not necessarily a contradiction. An operational shutdown and a corporate dissolution are two different things: a company can wind down its workforce, halt production, and still exist as a legal entity on paper, kept alive for tax, contractual, or asset reasons. Readers should hold both possibilities at once.

The Numbers Behind the Collapse

The financial trajectory of Build a Rocket Boy is, in a word, brutal.

According to filings covering the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025, the studio recorded £4.6 million in revenue against £52.1 million in operating costs, producing a net loss of £36.2 million. Those figures describe a company spending more than ten times what it earned.

The product at the center of that imbalance was MindsEye, which launched on June 10, 2025 to strongly negative reviews. On Steam, its 24-hour peak concurrent player count was just 16. For a project backed by one of the largest investment totals in recent UK game development history, the number was not merely disappointing. It was terminal.

That scale of investment becomes legible only in light of who was asking for it. Build a Rocket Boy was founded by Leslie Benzies, the former Rockstar North president who served as lead producer on Grand Theft Auto III through GTA V and GTA Online. He left Rockstar in 2016 and settled a $150 million royalties lawsuit with Take-Two in 2019. The studio, originally named Royal Circus Games, was renamed in October 2018. Its flagship project, Everywhere, was effectively shelved in favor of MindsEye. Benzies' pedigree explains why investors committed so heavily, and why the collapse has been so steep.

BARB had raised more than £233 million (roughly $313 million) by 2024, growing from around 200 employees to a peak of approximately 550, a figure Hawkins himself cited on LinkedIn. IGN's reporting of "over 500" at peak is consistent with that count.

After launch, roughly 300 UK staff received at-risk-of-redundancy emails, with further rounds following in 2026. In March 2026, IOI Partners concluded its MindsEye publishing agreement with BARB, cancelling a planned Hitman collaboration alongside it. Each of these developments narrowed the studio's options.

A Studio at War With Itself

The financial collapse was accompanied by a management style that alienated its own workforce, and the public record of that alienation is extensive.

The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) pursued legal action against BARB over alleged data privacy violations tied to surveillance software. The choice to monitor staff while the studio's flagship product was failing commercially suggested a leadership focused inward on control rather than outward on the problems it faced. Around 100 developers signed an open letter alleging mismanagement. Co-CEO Mark Gerhard publicly claimed the studio was the target of "organized espionage and corporate sabotage," a framing that did little to address the concerns raised by staff. The claim is revealing: it located the studio's failures in external actors rather than in the decisions made by the people running it, and it arrived at a moment when internal criticism was mounting.

In July 2026, employees protested outside the Edinburgh offices over an "all-expenses-paid" fan event held while cuts continued to mount. The image was a stark one: a studio celebrating its community while its workforce absorbed wave after wave of losses.

A "reset" announced in February 2026 was positioned as a course correction. It did not reverse the trend, and within months the publishing deal was gone. Throughout, the IWGB remained vocal, issuing a solidarity statement and committing to "getting justice" for workers over management's treatment of them.

What Official Records Actually Show

The tension at the heart of this story is simple to state. Employees and reporters describe a shutdown. Official records describe a company that still exists. The company itself describes nothing at all.

BUILD A ROCKET BOY LTD (company number SC537252) remains listed as active on UK Companies House. That status does not contradict reports of a wind-down. Companies House reflects legal registration, not operational reality, and a company can remain "active" for months or years after it stops trading. What would count as confirmation of dissolution is a specific set of filings: notice of intention to strike off, a voluntary liquidation resolution, or an official statement from the studio. None of those have appeared.

The absence of an official statement is itself a fact worth weighing. Companies in orderly wind-downs sometimes stay silent; so do companies in chaos.

What to Watch, and What It Means

It would be premature to declare Build a Rocket Boy dead. The more accurate description is that the studio is in an unresolved state: its workforce has been dismissed, its publishing partner has departed, its flagship game has failed commercially, and yet its corporate registration persists and its leadership has not spoken publicly.

Whatever the outcome, the MindsEye saga raises uncomfortable questions about how the industry funds and manages large-scale bets. More than £233 million in investment, hundreds of jobs, and years of development culminated in a game that peaked at 16 concurrent players on Steam and a company that now communicates only through the LinkedIn posts of the people leaving it. The workers who built MindsEye, and who protested and organized when the promises failed to materialize, are the ones left holding the consequences of a bet made far above their pay grade.

What happens next will be recorded in Companies House filings, IWGB statements, and, if the pattern holds, LinkedIn posts. The workers will be watching.