Mark Gerhard has been running the same play for nearly a year now: blame shadowy external forces for MindsEye's failure, promise prosecution, repeat. This week he added a new wrinkle. The Build a Rocket Boy CEO posted a statement to LinkedIn announcing yet another round of layoffs while simultaneously claiming the studio has collected "overwhelming evidence of organized espionage and corporate sabotage" that damaged the game's launch. The caption on the post reads, "Today is a very difficult day for our studio."
The statement opens with Gerhard accepting responsibility, then immediately pivots away from it. "As leaders we take responsibility for the outcomes of our projects," he writes, before explaining that "the launch period was affected by factors beyond normal operational challenges." He says Build a Rocket Boy has spent months working with external partners and legal advisors to investigate "the criminal activity that took place around our launch," and that the case is now moving toward prosecution. Because of that, he says, the details can't be shared publicly yet. Convenient.
This is not a new story. Before MindsEye even launched, Gerhard was warning about bot farms posting negative comments and coordinated efforts to trash the game. After launch, he and studio founder Leslie Benzies both pointed fingers at unnamed parties. In February, Gerhard escalated to claiming a "very big American company" had spent over €1 million on a smear campaign. Each time, the accusation gets bigger. Each time, the evidence stays private.
What isn't staying private is the response from people who actually worked there. Former Build a Rocket Boy brand director Chad McNeil replied to the LinkedIn post with one word: "Delusional." That's not a disgruntled comment from someone who never saw the inside of the studio. Multiple former developers have already gone on record describing brutal crunch, mismanagement, and a total absence of coherent direction from leadership. Publisher IO Interactive, which backed the game through its IOI Partners program, rejected the sabotage narrative entirely and has since indicated the experience has made it uncertain about publishing again.
Then there's the game itself. MindsEye sits on Metacritic with reviews that reflect exactly what players reported at launch: bugs, performance problems, and a product that felt unfinished. Build a Rocket Boy has pushed updates since then and released a free starter pack in November, but the launch wound never really closed. Around 300 staff were laid off last June, shortly after release. The number being cut in this latest round hasn't been disclosed.
The core problem with Gerhard's narrative isn't that corporate sabotage is impossible. It's that the burden of proof scales with the size of the claim, and "organized espionage" is a very large claim. The studio released an official gameplay teaser that showed a pedestrian ragdolling into the splits after being hit by a car, while a taxi rolled into frame on its roof, righted itself, and drove off. That footage went out under Build a Rocket Boy's own name. No espionage required.
More people are now out of work at a studio whose leadership has spent the better part of a year constructing an elaborate external explanation for problems that former employees say started at the top. If the prosecution ever materializes and the evidence turns out to be real, that changes everything. But right now, the people losing jobs aren't waiting for a courtroom verdict. They're updating their LinkedIn profiles.
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