MindsEye, from UK developer Build a Rocket Boy (BaRB), was arguably the worst game to come out in 2025. It was the worst game of last year by Metacritic’s standards, reaching only a 37, and was called out ruthlessly for the broken state it arrived in on launch. While the studio has made several strides to update and fix the game and save the studio, a new report from GamesIndustry.Biz digs into whether that’s even possible. According to some former members of BaRB staff, the answer is a resounding no.
To say MindsEye and Build a Rocket Boy have had a difficult time in the last year would be an understatement. Before the game even came out, negative previews, the sudden departure of two high-level executives, and physical copies leaking into the wild early spelled a disastrous launch for MindsEye.
BaRB did its best to quell concerns at the time, and while it was “heartbroken,” it promised to update and fix the game, but the damage was done. Players were getting refunds, and the Reddit page was littered with screencaps and videos of the game’s worst bugs. Less than a month after its release, the studio confirmed it would be suffering mass layoffs.
As BaRB warned players it would release updates “less frequently” to try and pack in as much as it can per update, in the months following its launch, an open letter from 93 BaRB developers called out the studio’s leaders, Leslie Benzies and Mark Gerhard, as the root of the studio’s problems. A little more than a week after that open letter, a report from the BBC included more statements from BaRB employees and revealed new examples pointing to Gerhard and Benzies as the root of the studio’s problems.
Meanwhile, Benzies and Gerhard blamed internal and external “saboteurs” for the company’s issues. A story that Gerhard recently doubled down on, as the studio claimed to have acquired evidence of a “coordinated campaign” to smear the reputation of BaRB and MindsEye.
Now, GI.Biz’s new report is the latest example that shows, once again, the simplest answer is probably the truth. Instead of an alleged smear campaign that cost an unnamed American company upwards of $1.1 million to carry out, MindsEye and BaRB’s troubles more likely stem from poor leadership that was seemingly unwilling to listen to the hundreds of talented developers they hired to make this game.
“I’d hoped for more of an explanation about the layoffs and our company situation,” said one former BaRB staff member when recalling the events of what happened within BaRB shortly after MindsEye launched. “But instead, we’d been told there were saboteurs inside and outside the company trying to take us down. Leslie didn’t seem to take any blame for the game’s launch. It was genuinely offensive that he didn’t trust his own employees. The idea that we’d sabotage a game we’d spent countless hours working on was just rude to me.”
One thing mentioned in the report is the idea that co-founder and co-chief executive officer Leslie Benzies would fixate on a certain feature or new idea that he demanded be given priority over everything else developers were doing. The staffers who spoke to the BBC for their report in October 2025 dubbed them “Leslies,” though that specific shorthand is not mentioned here.
“If management had concentrated on tightening everything up at that point, then it could have worked,” added Ben Newbon, former lead data analyst for BaRB. “But instead, they kept on trying to throw extra stuff on it. Leslie’s eye would be caught by something in particular and then insist this extra feature be added in, even like a month before launch. There wasn’t enough time to test those things and to get all the pieces in place to actually make it work without it breaking.”
Another staff member added, referring to Benzies, “They crushed their own talent under the yoke of appeasing a single person at the very top.” One former member even believed the game could have been a hit, if not for management. “He [Benzies] may have had a winning formula if he’d have listened to the advice from the literal hundreds of fantastic, insanely talented, and hard-working industry professionals they spent so much time and money hiring.”
“We had so many fundamental changes to the game that it would’ve been impossible to make a good game in the time we had.”
Speaking of Benzies, the report also adds that he has taken a temporary leave from the studio, with a statement from Gerhard saying he is on “a well-earned temporary leave to recharge after more than a year of working around the clock.”
“He has our deepest gratitude, and with the leadership team and your support, I will guide us forward,” Gerhard continued. It’s unclear if this leave will become permanent at this stage, though if some of the staff who spoke to GI.Biz for this report are correct, there won’t be a BaRB to come back to.
“Even if they had the best leadership in the world, there’s no way to bring this back,” said Newbon. “Even if they fix all of the bugs and technical issues, it’s still an extremely boring game. Leadership do not listen. Plus, they’ve culled over half the studio. They don’t know how to run a business. They don’t know how to run a game studio.”
Another former staff member added, “I don’t think BaRB survives this crisis. I believe the end is coming for BaRB, and it’s not heralded by saboteurs, but by Mark and Leslie themselves.”
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