What was to happen happened: the studio Build A Rocket Boy announced to its staff that a layoff plan had been launched following the catastrophic launch of MindsEye. These job cuts could affect more than 100 employees, according to our internal sources from the studio
A person, who wished to remain anonymous to protect his career, told IGN that he was still too early to confirm with precision how many employees would be affected, but that the first stage of the procedure (a standard 45 -day consultation) had started today, June 23. According to British law, it is triggered when an employer plans to dismiss 100 or more people over a period of 90 days. Also note that Build A Rocket Boy currently has around 300 employees in the United Kingdom, including around 200 based abroad.
IGN contacted the studio executives to try to get more information.
The staff must now wait in the anxiety of knowledge who will be affected by these references. Meanwhile, serious questions arise for the ability of Build A Rocket Boy to respect his roadmap of post-launch content, including the promised multiplayer mode, within the time limits.
Last week, Build A Rocket Boy said he was “upset” by the problems encountered by players in the game recently released, and promised to publish a series of fixes to solve performance problems, bugs and AI behavior problems. The deployment of these patches has also already started.
Meanwhile, the studio has canceled all sponsored streams initially planned to support the launch of Mindseye, and players were reimbursed, even from Sonywhich usually is normally stubborn as to its reimbursement policy.
On Steam, the game reached a peak of 3,302 simultaneous players when it was launched, but only 130 people stayed there after 24 hours. At the time of the publication of this article, only 52 people played on Steam, with a “mainly negative” global user user.
Mindseye was initially from Everywhere, the “Roblox for adult” games “game platform led by Leslie Benziesformer manager of the franchise GTA. Studio Build a Rocket Boy, based in Edinburgh, in Scotland, had finally decided to make it a full-fledged action/adventure game, but it has not yet managed to convince the players. Which, in fact, does not bode well for business affairs.
In an email addressed to the staff and consulted by IGN, the studio co-PDG, Mark Gerhardinsisted that his business remained engaged in improving the Mindseye experience, by evoking the passage of a development phase and an intense launch to a post-launching sustainable support phase.
Mark Gerhard had made the headlines before the launch of MindsEye By asserting without really foundation that bots were used en masse to “denigrate the game and the studio” on the internet via negative comments, suggesting at the same time that the media had been paid to say evil of the game. Affirmations that the boss of the game editor, Io Interactive, later denied.
Wesley is director of the IGN News section.
