While reception to open-world action game MindsEye has been middling at best, it looks like developer Build A Rocket Boy is going through some layoffs in the wake of its release. According to IGN, the studio has been told that it will be facing job cuts as part of an effort to cut down on redundancies, potentially affecting more than 100 employees.
While it’s yet to make any official statement regarding the matter, one of the sources for the report has revealed that a 45-day consultation process – required by UK law whenever a company is cutting the jobs of more than 100 of its employees within 90 days – has begun as of June 23.
A major part of the middling reception to MindsEye has been the plethora of bugs and technical problems that players have faced when trying the game out. The developer took to Reddit to apologise for the state of the game, while also promising updates that would make it more playable.
“We are heartbroken that not every player was able to experience the game as we intended,” wrote the studio. “Our priority is optimizing performance and stability so that every player, across every device, can enjoy an equally high-quality experience.”
In its post, the studio also mentioned that one of the biggest reasons for the game’s performance issues came down to a memory leak that was seemingly affecting one out of every ten MindsEye players.
“Our teams have worked tirelessly throughout the night to solve many of these issues, and we have now identified that the vast majority of crashes were caused by a memory leak. This impacted roughly 1 in 10 of our players.”
Released earlier this month, MindsEye has seen quite a bit of backlash because of its performance issues. One user noticed that Sony had begun allowing refunds for digital copies. This is especially noteworthy since PlayStation is notorious for its strict policies on not offering refunds, with the only exception to this rule having been Cyberpunk 2077 back when it first launched in a rough state on the PS4.
“I was checking if it was possible to process the refund for you, and I have good news,” wrote a PlayStation support team member, according to a social media post. “Usually, we are not allowed to process refunds for games that were downloaded because of the PlayStation Store cancellation policy. However, we understand that you are having issues with the game after the troubleshooting that you did and that you want to request a refund for it, so we’ll make an exception and process your refund as a goodwill gesture on your account.”
For more details about MindsEye – which is out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S – check out our review. In the meantime, also check out our thoughts on what exactly went wrong with the title, and whether there is any hope left for it.
