MindsEye studio Build A Rocket Boy appoints administrators

Build A Rocket Boy, the studio behind MindsEye, has appointed administrators following its most recent round of layoffs. A filing with Companies House indicates that an administrator has been appointed, and the studio confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that Opus Advisory Group is acting in that role. The filing itself was not available at the time GamesIndustry.biz published its report.

Appointing an administrator indicates that a company is insolvent and requires protection from legal action by the people and organisations it owes money to. GamesIndustry.biz has approached Build A Rocket Boy for comment.

£61.8 million owed to creditors

The most recently available accounts for Build A Rocket Boy cover the 12 months ending September 30, 2025. For that financial year the company reported a £47.5 million operating loss and a £36.2 million net loss, and as of that date owed creditors a total of £61.8 million.

The studio has taken investment from NetEase Games, RedBird Capital Partners and Galaxy Interactive. Directors representing all three firms were terminated from the board over the summer of 2026.

From MindsEye's launch to insolvency

Build A Rocket Boy was founded in 2016 by Rockstar veteran Leslie Benzies. Its debut project, MindsEye, launched on June 4, 2025 to negative reviews and a poor reception from players. Within a month, around 300 staff received notice that they were at risk of redundancy, and in October 2025 the IWGB Game Workers union announced legal action against the studio, alleging that it had mishandled the redundancy process.

In early 2026, employees found that Teramind monitoring software had been installed on their work machines without notification from management. Co-CEO Benzies attributed the move in part to what he saw as an effort to sabotage both the studio and MindsEye. Fellow co-CEO Mark Gerhard later claimed, without providing evidence, that "a very big American company" had spent more than €1 million in 2025 committing criminal activity against Build A Rocket Boy. The IWGB subsequently launched further legal action over data privacy violations relating to the monitoring software.

The company repeated the allegation in March 2026, describing an organised espionage and corporate sabotage effort against the studio as it carried out another wave of redundancies. In April 2026 it released the Blacklisted update, which Gerhard called a significant step forward for MindsEye and for the studio. A further wave of layoffs followed in September 2026, immediately preceding the administration.