Despite being one of 2025’s biggest flops, MindsEye is one of the more fascinating failures in recent memory, largely because of the seemingly paranoid allegations of developer Build A Rocket Boy’s co-CEOs Mark Gerhard and former Rockstar executive Leslie Benzies. Both before and after MindsEye’s release, Benzies and Gerhard have insisted—without substantiation—that its middling reputation and reception were the product of concerted sabotage rather than entertain the notion that their company’s game simply wasn’t very fun.
That conspiratorial thinking has undergone an exciting new mutation, as Insider Gaming reports that in a leaked recording of a late January internal meeting, Gerhard allegedly informed Build A Rocket Boy (BARB) employees that the company has “caught the guys who’ve been sabotaging MindsEye.” In addition to facing criminal complaints, Gerhard said the names of the alleged “guys” will be used in an upcoming MindsEye mission in an attempt to “own this narrative.”
Employees were reportedly told that the masterminds of the supposed organized slandering of MindsEye and Build A Rocket Boy was a “very big American company” that spent over €1 million on an elaborate smear campaign, but—despite Benzies and Gerhard previously implying that Rockstar was responsible for BARB’s misadventures—it’s “probably not the company you’re thinking of.”
Gerhard claimed the campaign, which allegedly included payments to several influencers, three journalists, and the studio’s own employees, was perpetrated by a company called Ritual Network—which is based in the UK, and not America. How deep this conspiracy goes is impossible to say.
While Gerhard reportedly said all involved individuals would be served “in-person criminal complaints” on charges of “espionage, sabotage, and criminal interference,” Ritual Network told Insider Gaming that they “are not aware of any legitimate legal action involving Ritual Network and have not been provided with any evidence supporting these claims. Any suggestion that Ritual Network is connected to these allegations is incorrect.”
When asked for comment about the meeting’s allegations, a Build A Rocket Boy spokesperson told Insider Gaming the company doesn’t comment on leaked internal communications.
“Sadly, we do have evidence that there has been a coordinated campaign to purposefully and maliciously damage Build A Rocket Boy’s reputation and undermine confidence in MindsEye,” the spokesperson said. “We are working with our legal team and taking steps to address this.”
Just so we’re all on the same page here: This is a company whose second official gameplay teaser ahead of MindsEye’s launch consisted of one entire minute of someone just kind of driving around while a woman says rude things at them on the phone. But yeah, could be saboteurs, I guess.
Watch On
As the meeting continued, Gerhard reportedly went on to say that the conspirators behind BARB’s alleged reputational assassination would be featured in MindsEye itself in an “upcoming spy mission”—evidently a reformatting of the Hitman-themed mission being produced as part of the studio’s seemingly-cancelled publishing deal with IO Interactive.
“Given this happened to us, I’m gonna own this narrative. We will use these people, these names, and these facts for our own fun,” Gerhard said, later describing the gambit as “judoing this right back at them.”
Before the meeting closed, Gerhard addressed the rollout of an “enhanced cybersecurity software” that had been installed on employee PCs without their knowledge. The co-CEO acknowledged that the software, which allegedly tracks user activity, keystrokes, and screen behavior, “has caused quite a lot of confusion, upset, perhaps even mistrust,” but said “it’s only there because of what we’ve been through, and I want to make sure that I can protect you guys going forward.”
When MindsEye’s catastrophic launch led to the layoffs of over 250 studio staff members, former employees sent an open letter to company leadership that said the game’s development wasn’t harmed by sabotage, but by the “systemic mistreatment, mismanagement, and mishandling of the redundancy process” of Benzies and Gerhard.
“Even before the disastrous launch of MindsEye, staff had suffered months of crunch, resulting in some horrific mental and even physical illnesses, beyond the typical widespread burnout,” said former BARB analyst Ben Newbon in a statement following the letter’s publication. “Studio leadership have chosen not to take responsibility for the game’s failure and instead blamed saboteurs, as if individual employees or online influencers could have caused this.”
Read the full article here
