On Saturday, former employees of MindsEye developer Build A Rocket Boy protested outside an event the studio held for fans at its Edinburgh office. The protest, organized by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain that represents some BARB employees, was to draw attention to the company spending money on what the union called an "extravagant playtest event” after having laid off over 250 employees surrounding the game’s poor launch in June 2025.
According to a press release from the IWGB, BARB flew MindsEye fans to Edinburgh and paid for their lodging in order for them to test new features of the game. The union claimed BARB was “misusing funds after so many mass layoffs for the ‘playtest day’, with fans being flown in and given accommodation in order to do the work that now-fired staff would otherwise be doing.”
“Today's playtest is little more than a grandstanding gesture from managers who continue to treat both the company and its employees as props to support their own ambitions,” said former BARB employee Ben Newbon in the press release. “Their conduct, both before and since the disastrous launch of MindsEye, makes a mockery of the sweat, skill, and dedication that we poured into making their vision come to life.”
MindsEye most recently got a new mission called “Blacklisted” in April. “Blacklisted” purported to explore what BARB CEOs Mark Gerhard and Leslie Benzies have claimed was ‘sabotage’ by people both inside and outside the studio to try to tank the game. That mission featured what former employee Isaac Hudd called in a speech a “leather-clad, sexist stereotype,” saying that in leadership’s search for saboteurs “they were too busy to look in the mirror and see that it was them all along.”
I'd encourage you to watch this speech from former employee, Isaac Hudd. Also, given this is yet *another* Edinburgh-based studio at the heart of *another* controversy affecting game workers in the UK, you'll spot some familiar faces from Rockstar who turned up to show their solidarity on the day.
— Chris Bratt (@chrisbratt.bsky.social) July 13, 2026 at 7:30 AM
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Hudd claimed BARB has replaced community managers with fans, and now has flown in fans “on BARB’s ever-dwindling dime to playtest an online game that can be played from anywhere. It would be a nice gesture at most companies, but after the lies and the fear, the stress and ignoring damn near every attempt to make things right from their ex-employees, it’s nothing more than a kick in the teeth to those they’ve abandoned. And now we’re here to show them that jobless does not mean toothless.”
Aftermath has reached out to Build A Rocket Boy for comment.
The union claims that in addition to several rounds of layoffs, BARB created a “toxic working environment, [with] overwork, and excessive surveillance.” The company reportedly installed monitoring software Teramind on employees’ computers in February, which was ultimately removed in March following backlash from employees, and over which the IWGB took legal action regarding data collection. IWGB also took legal action against the studio for how it handled some of its layoffs, and employees filed an open letter detailing crunch and other negative working conditions at the studio.
“This extravagant playtest event is a waste of money, and a kick in the teeth for the fired workers who are seeing fans brought in to do jobs that would otherwise have been theirs," said IWGB Game Workers Branch chair Spring McParlin-Jones in the press release. "The members teaming up to fight back are an inspiration. They already forced BARB to stop spying on them with invasive surveillance software. Now, refusing to take their foot off the pedal, they are continuing to stand up to these rogue bosses both in the courts and on the streets."
“As workers we gave everything we had to create a studio that had the potential to bring real prestige to Scotland's games industry,” said Newbon. “Instead, BARB has been hollowed out by years of poor leadership. The people who built BARB deserve respect, accountability from leadership, and a workplace that values the people who make its success possible.”
Build A Rocket Boy was founded in 2016 by Benzies, formerly president of Rockstar North. It was initially working on an MMO tool called Everywhere before shifting focus to MindsEye, which Hitman developer IO Interactive signed a deal to publish in 2024. (IO cut ties with the studio in March 2026.) Workers claimed that during development Benzies frequently demanded new things be added to the game and refused to listen to employees, with one worker telling GamesIndustry.biz that Benzies “may have had a winning formula if he'd have listened to the advice from the literal hundreds of fantastic, insanely talented, and hard-working industry professionals they spent so much time and money hiring.” Two senior executives left the studio a week before launch, and the game was ultimately badly-received, with Hudd saying at the protest that it was “Metacritic’s worst game of 2025.”
“Whilst the goingson at BARB sound extreme, game workers know that shocking treatment from bosses is rife across the sector,” said McParlin-Jones. “But we can see a different future, and the union is gaining momentum every day as we move towards it.”
