MindsEye developers who have lost their jobs will protest outside the studio’s office over what they have described as an “all-expenses-paid playtest day.”
The IWGB Game Workers Union (the same union representing the fired GTA 6 developers), said the protest will take place outside Build a Rocket Boy’s Edinburgh, Scotland office this Saturday, July 11, at 11am local time. The union alleged BARB will fly fans into the studio to try out new features for MindsEye this weekend.
The union said it will protest the studio’s decision to fund the event after mass layoffs over the last year, and amid wider disputes between workers and the company over alleged invasive employee surveillance, union blacklisting, and the handling of redundancies. The IWGB told IGN it expects around 20 people on the day, including laid-off BARB workers and their supporters. The protest is not expected to include current BARB staff.
BARB provided IGN with the following statement:
“This Saturday we’re hosting a community event as part of our ongoing commitment to our game creation system, Arcadia, and the creators who have supported us from the very beginning. Bringing creators together to experience new features first-hand and share direct feedback is a very well-established part of game development, and that feedback is our most important input.”
It’s the latest dramatic development at BARB following the disastrous release of MindsEye. In July last year, IGN reported that BARB had issued at-risk of redundancy emails to its then around 300-strong UK workforce after MindsEye flopped at release. Soon after MindsEye came out, BARB said it was “heartbroken” over the issues players had faced with the game, and promised to release a series of patches to fix the significant performance problems, glitches, and AI behavior bugs.
Story-driven action adventure game MindsEye was initially designed to be a part of Everywhere, the ‘Roblox for adults’ creation platform led by former Grand Theft Auto design chief Leslie Benzies. BARB eventually switched to focus on MindsEye, but it has so-far failed to do the business for the company.
Following the release of the game, Benzies told staff that the studio would bounce back and relaunch MindsEye, blaming its struggles on internal and external saboteurs, among other things. CEO Mark Gerhard said the studio had been investigating what he called “criminal activity” that took place around the launch of the game.
Eventually, BARB attempted to relaunch MindsEye with what was called the “Blacklisted” update, but it failed to move the needle. While console player numbers are unavailable, MindsEye had a 24-hour peak Steam concurrent player count of just 48.
In May, Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar parent company Take-Two, issued what sounded like a nod to BARB’s struggles. “Making hits seems to get harder and harder and harder as entertainment industries mature,” Zelnick said, speaking at the TD Cowen 54th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference.
“The folks at Rockstar seem to be able to make these massive hits, and lots of other people have tried. Lots and lots, including former Rockstar employees. And so far, they haven’t been able to do it.
“Doesn’t mean they can’t in the future, by the way,” Zelnick continued. “We’re always running scared. But it won’t be technology that changes the game. What’ll change is that some extraordinarily creative individual or individuals will show up and do something astonishing. Our goal is to get those people to work within the Take-Two system. If we fail to do that, we fail.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
