MindsEye Developer Build A Rocket Boy Faces Worker Protests Over 'Extravagant' Fan Playtest Amid Mass Layoffs and Surveillance Lawsuit

Overview

Former employees of MindsEye developer Build A Rocket Boy (BARB), joined by the IWGB Game Workers Union, protested outside the studio’s headquarters in Leith, Scotland, on Saturday, July 11, according to Game Developer, after the company flew in fans for a paid playtest event even as it worked through months of mass layoffs. MindsEye was released in June 2025 and landed a 39 Metacritic score on PC and a 29 on PS5, making it, as VGC put it, “the worst-rated game of last year.”

What We Know

• The protest targeted a fan playtest event. Former BARB employees belonging to the IWGB union “were joined by other union members and supporters outside the Edinburgh studio on Saturday, July 11,” Game Developer reported. The IWGB said the studio’s “all-expenses-paid playtest event” was seeing fans “take on testing duties usually carried out by professional staff,” according to VGC.
• The union called the event a waste of money. IWGB Game Workers Branch chair Spring McParlin-Jones said: “This extravagant playtest event is a waste of money, and a kick in the teeth for the fired workers who are seeing fans brought in to do jobs that would otherwise have been theirs,” as reported by Push Square and VGC.
• Layoff estimates vary but are substantial. The IWGB “estimates more than 400 employees have been laid off” at the studio, while separately “BARB has laid off 250-300 employees over the last 13 months,” according to VGC — a figure Game Developer independently corroborated, reporting “an estimated 250-300 workers have been laid off since last June.” Co-CEO Mark Gerhard announced one such round on March 4, writing “Today we are announcing a further number of redundancies at the studio,” per Kotaku.
• A former employee criticized management directly. Ben Newbon, a former BARB employee, said management continued to “put their own egos ahead of their workforce—eroding jobs, morale, and the future of the studio,” according to VGC and Game Developer.
• The IWGB has also taken legal action over surveillance software. “The IWGB Game Workers Union has taken legal action against the studio over allegations of data privacy violations related to the installation of surveillance software on work devices,” Game Developer reported. VGC similarly reported the union’s claim that “in their witch hunt they secretly installed privacy-invading monitoring software on their employees’ PCs,” per VGC.
• Gerhard has attributed MindsEye’s problems to sabotage rather than the game’s reception. In a separate statement, Gerhard said an internal investigation “resulted in overwhelming evidence of organised espionage and corporate sabotage affecting MindsEye,” according to Kotaku.

What We Don’t Know

• Neither Build A Rocket Boy nor Mark Gerhard has issued a public response to the July 11 protest specifically, per Game Developer.
• The specific surveillance software product installed on staff devices, the legal body the IWGB’s data-privacy claim was filed with, and the remedy the union is seeking have not been disclosed in reporting on the case, per Game Developer.
• The exact total headcount reduction remains disputed, with estimates from the same reporting ranging between roughly 250 and more than 400 employees, according to VGC.

Analysis

The protest crystallizes a year-long pattern at Build A Rocket Boy: a studio that has cycled through repeated rounds of layoffs since MindsEye’s poorly received June 2025 launch while its leadership has publicly framed the game’s failure around sabotage and espionage rather than reception or execution, as Gerhard’s own statements to Kotaku illustrate. Against that backdrop, flying fans in for a paid playtest struck former staff and their union as tone-deaf, prompting the direct rebuke from IWGB’s McParlin-Jones that the studio was asking outsiders to do work “that would otherwise have been theirs.” The unresolved surveillance-software legal action adds a second front to the dispute, one that centers on how the company treated the employees it retained rather than solely on those it let go.