If you turn the clock back two years to 2024, Build a Rocket Boy (BaRB) was known as the studio founded by former Rockstar producer Leslie Benzies, and with $110M raised in funding, it seemed poised to be the next big independent studio in the market. That’s two years ago though. Now, it’s known as the team behind MindsEye, one of the worst games to release in 2025, with one of the worst launches ever, and apparently, the co-chief executive officer of BaRB, Mark Gerhard, believes MindsEye’s launch was, undoubtedly, the worst launch in video game history.
“We know we had, without doubt, the worst launch in history. And obviously there’s many reasons for that, but we are planning to relaunch our game now that the interference has stopped,” Gerhard told GamesBeat in a new interview. “The game is being very well-reviewed. The sales are increasing organically, doubling almost weekly.”
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The “interference” Gerhard is referring to is the “corporate espionage” he’s previously alleged to be the cause of MindsEye’s poor reception. Not the litany of performance issues the game launched with or the bland story stitched between bland gameplay. Though Gerhard does at least admit some of those problems at launch were “on us.”
“We own that as a leadership team and as a studio. I can say, having done in total 72 games in my life, I’ve never worked on a game that was completely bug-free. It’s always a judgment as to whether you are proud or when it’s good enough. You obviously work tirelessly to make sure you don’t have any showstoppers,” Gerhard said.
But even when admitting fault in the many real issues that players had with MindsEye when it launched, Gerhard continues to double down on claims that MindsEye and BaRB were victims of a campaign meant to damage MindsEye and BaRB, both internally within the studio and with external forces. He also claims that the negativity has now stopped, and that this is what has led to MindsEye getting “very well reviewed” of late and the alleged increase in sales.
“Obviously, we were kind of caught flat-footed on that. We didn’t counter the negative narrative. We weren’t sophisticated enough to have done that,” Gerhard says, speaking of the studio’s inability to counter the alleged conspiracy against BaRB. “But, we’re aware. We’ve called that out. Some of the negativity has been orchestrated around this, and thankfully, as a result, it stopped.”
Gehard continues to claim that the studio has gathered evidence of the alleged sabotage and that it is in the hands of the authorities now. He also adds that an upcoming DLC for MindsEye has been built around the sabotage the studio suffered, which we had previously heard from BaRB back in February 2026.
“We’ve got very strong evidence of this and conducted quite thorough investigations over the months since launch. We’ve identified parties involved, and it’s now with the authorities both U.K. and U.S. to deal with. I can confirm that they’re assisting us with this investigation, but it’s also in their hands now. We’ll leave them to do what they do, make their arrests or any announcements in due course. I think we’re not saying anything further at this stage on that. We’ll just let the natural course of justice take its take its path.…We’re also using that to share some of the evidence of the sabotage with the community.”
Wccftech has been following the MindsEye story very closely since it launched last year, which includes every time Gerhard and Benzies have cried wolf about ‘corporate espionage,’ and also includes the several reports from BaRB staff who have directly called out Benzies and Gerhard as unfit leaders who are the real root of BaRB’s problems.
It’s also worth noting that since MindsEye had ‘the worst launch ever,’ BaRB has been through multiple rounds of layoffs, which, according to this new interview, has BaRB down from its peak of 800 developers down to 100.
This is the first time Gerhard has spoken out since IO Interactive officially cut off its relationship with the studio after publishing MindsEye, and while it’s still technically possible that evidence of the alleged espionage could prove Gerhard’s claims true, it’s consistently difficult to believe compared to what is the simpler answer to all of MindsEye and BaRB’s troubles, which are far easier to deduce than alleged ‘corporate espionage.’
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