Following recent layoffs, Build A Rocket Boy – the studio behind MindsEye – has filed for administration. According to GamesIndustry.biz, the company has appointed Opus Advisory Group to act as its administrators as Build A Rocket Boy goes through its insolvency proceedings.
Financial details about Build A Rocket Boy indicate that, in the 12-month period ending on September 30th, 2025, it suffered losses of £47.5 million in operational expenses and a net loss of £36.2 million. Along with this, the studio also owed £61.8 million to its creditors.
With its administration filing indicating that the company finds itself unable to pay back the money owed to creditors, Build A Rocket Boy is now seeking protection from potential legal action.
This confirmation comes just a week after a new round of layoffs hit Build A Rocket Boy, which in turn raised concerns about the MindsEye developer being on the verge of shutting down. In its report on the matter, Kotaku cited sources that believed that the studio’s survival has been brought into question in light of several layoffs thanks to the underperformance of MindsEye.
There have also been concerns raised about the studio’s treatment of its employees, and earlier this year, many workers even protested an “all-expenses-paid playtest day”. Industry veteran and MindsEye lead animator Chris Wilson spoke about the culture of crunch at Build A Rocket Boy, which even led to “horrific mental and even physical illness.”
“Even before the disastrous launch of MindsEye, staff had suffered months of crunch, resulting in some horrific mental and even physical illnesses, beyond the typical widespread burnout,” he said.
“It was hard for a lot of people. It did go on for a considerable amount of time[…] Some teams were on crunch for quite some time. In cinematics, we were probably in crunch from June until a good few months later…no overtime pay or anything like that.”
“Eight hours was the minimum requirement, but people were doing way more for sure,” Wilson said. “I was doing way over an additional eight hours a week…there were people who were certainly not appreciative of having to work those extra hours, but a lot of people just had to bite the bullet. I think Cinematics were crunching for somewhere between six to nine months. Some people racked up a lot of extra hours, and that’s outside of the general day-to-day stuff. People were already doing extra hours, and then they introduced the crunch as well.”
MindsEye was released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S in June 2025, and since then, it has seen plenty of criticism. Despite its lack of commercial success, however, Build A Rocket Boy has tried turning things around for the title with several post-launch updates, with one just a couple of months ago even bringing in changes to its ending.
Interestingly, the studio had largely focused on adding more features to the in-game creation suite – dubbed Arcadia – and back in July, even added a strange 5v5 competitive multiplayer game mode dubbed Grenade Football.
For more details about MindsEye, check out our review from when it first came out.
