Build A Rocket Boy, the studio behind MindsEye, entered administration on 23 September. Companies House now lists Build A Rocket Boy Ltd as “In Administration”, with the appointment of administrators filed today, 25 September. That backs up reports last week that the company was shutting down after another wave of staff departures.
Several departing employees said their time at the studio was ending, while Kotaku reported that sources familiar with the situation had confirmed it was closing permanently. The administration filing makes those reports considerably more concrete. Companies House still lists two related Build A Rocket Boy companies as active, though it’s unclear what will happen to those.
It’s a grim end to a company that has a rather crazy story and enormous ambitions. Founded in 2016 by former Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies, Build A Rocket Boy was working on the Everywhere platform, its creation tools and MindsEye. In January 2024, it announced a funding round worth more than $110 million to help bring those projects to market. Without a doubt, the GTA credentials helped bring a lot of that cash in.
MindsEye finally arrived in June 2025, and things went badly almost immediately. Players complained about bugs and performance, some reported receiving refunds, and the studio acknowledged the launch problems. Less than a month later, Build A Rocket Boy confirmed a redundancy consultation. In October, 93 current and former employees signed an open letter published by the IWGB alleging excessive overtime, poor management and mishandled layoffs.
Then came the stranger part of the story. Co-CEO Mark Gerhard claimed MindsEye had been targeted by an organised sabotage campaign, something I covered in detail in February. The company repeated those claims while announcing further layoffs in March, saying it had evidence but could not yet share the full details publicly. Meanwhile, the IWGB announced legal action over alleged employee surveillance and the handling of earlier redundancies.
Build A Rocket Boy also split from MindsEye publisher IOI Partners, a move reported back in January and formally confirmed in March. The cancelled Hitman crossover was reportedly reworked into Blacklisted, a mission for Mindseye that Gerhard claimed would share some evidence of the alleged sabotage. When the mission launched, though, it contained a few references to the allegations the company had already made, and that was it.
To its credit, the studio kept trying to improve MindsEye, but after further layoffs and last week’s closure reports, it clearly wasn’t enough to keep them going.
It’s a hell of an end to a studio that was, frankly, kind of fascinating. Build A Rocket Boy is many things, but boring was never one of them. And I genuinely was intrigued to see if they had any evidence they could bring to the table in court to prove sabotage, as they seemed so confident. Last we heard, Gerhard had handed over the ‘evidence’ to authorites in the UK and US, but so far nothing appears to have come of it.
RIP Build A Rocket Boy. You were interesting.
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