MindsEye studio Build A Rocket Boy reported to be shutting down as staff announce exits
Build A Rocket Boy, the studio behind MindsEye founded by Grand Theft Auto veteran Leslie Benzies, has been reported to be shutting down permanently.
Kotaku reported the claim, citing sources close to the studio, while IGN reported that more staff working at the company said they had been laid off, according to Eurogamer. The reports were published on 16 September 2026.
Several employees have said publicly that their time at the studio is ending. Stuart Ross, Liam Shannon, Michaela Emslie, Sandy Greig, Elizabet Tyaneva and Cameron Deaves all recently announced that their spells at Build A Rocket Boy were coming to a close.
The names kept coming. Principal talent acquisition officer Dan Hawkins said in a LinkedIn post that he was looking for new work along with the rest of his colleagues. He said he was seeing the studio, shortened to BARB, through to the very end while helping to wrap things up in human resources.
The reported closure follows months of cuts. In May, the studio reportedly laid off a further 170 workers, described as a continuation of cuts announced in March.
That May round left about 80 staff remaining from a total of about 250, according to reports at the time. Roles affected included technical level design and audio design. Kotaku’s report of up to 170 layoffs cited two sources, and the studio had not made a formal public statement about the cuts when that report was published, according to Kotaku and GamesIndustry.biz.
Earlier, about 300 UK-based employees had reportedly received “at-risk of redundancy” emails in July 2025, following a layoffs announcement. At-risk of redundancy is the formal UK notice that a job may be cut.
Senior leadership had also changed before release. The chief legal officer and chief financial officer left about a week before the release of MindsEye. In June 2025, the studio confirmed that a redundancy process, the formal UK route for cutting jobs, had begun.
Remaining staff staged a protest this summer against the studio’s “all expenses paid” fan event.
