How ex-Grand Theft Auto boss’s grand vision became a £200m flop

In July this year, workers at Build a Rocket Boy, a video game studio in Edinburgh, were summoned to an all-staff meeting.

Their first game ever, a sci-fi adventure called MindsEye, was released three weeks ago — and it was a complete disaster.

Critics and players called it “broken”, “buggy” and “the worst game of 2025”.

Addressing employees via video link to the company’s president, Leslie Benzies assured them that there was a plan to get things back on track, and said that the negativity they saw was “unjustified.”

He then turned around, claiming that “internal and external” forces were working to thwart the launch of MindsEye.

He told the assembled workers – who were told they were facing redundancies just a week ago – that there would be efforts to root out “saboteurs” within the company.

“I find it disgusting that anyone would sit among us and act this way and continue to work here,” he said, according to a transcript of the meeting verified by BBC Newsbeat.

Employees who worked at the studio say they were surprised, and not just by the power of the language. They simply didn’t believe him.

From their perspective, there was no conspiracy, and the reasons for MindsEye’s failure were clear.

Mr. Benzies is best known for his work at Rockstar Games where he was a prominent figure in the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) action adventure series, and is considered by many to be a key architect of its success.

He left in 2016, three years after GTA 5’s record-breaking launch, sparking a legal dispute over unpaid royalties that was settled out of court.

That same year, he founded the company that later became Build a Rocket Boy (Barb). By the end of 2024, its number of employees had increased to 448 employees.

Most were based at its head office – a former casino in Leith, Edinburgh – but the company also had studios in Budapest and in the French city of Montpellier.

Former employees say salaries were competitive, the company allowed remote work, and their response to the Covid-19 pandemic was good.

With Mr. Benzies at the helm of the company, Barb has attracted a lot of attention, and according to… Documents that UK companies are legally required to publish onlineIt has managed to attract more than £233 million in investment by 2024.

It also spent large sums of money without launching any products.

Between 2020 and 2024, the company recorded losses totaling £202.6m, with its biggest loss in a single year – £59.1m – in 2023.

Barb’s first project was Everywhere, which one former employee, Jamie (not his real name), described as a massively multiplayer role-playing game (RPG) based in an open-ended futuristic city.

“I thought we had something very special,” says Jamie, who left the company in 2022.

To achieve this vision, Jimmy says, Mr. Benzies required new ideas and features to be added at breakneck speed — too fast to be implemented properly.

The studio’s main focus would eventually shift to MindsEye – a game that was originally intended to be offered as an in-house experience.

“Leslie never decided what game he wanted to play,” Jimmy says. “There was no coherent direction.”

They say this modus operandi “disturbed the project from the beginning” and will be a sign of things to come.

An open letter, recently signed by 93 current and former Barb employees, alleges that studio management made “radical changes” without properly consulting workers.

Former principal data analyst Ben Newbon says it was common for employees to be surprised by “knee-jerk” decisions from senior management without a proper explanation.

The letter also alleges that leadership “repeatedly refused to listen” to its experienced workforce.

Ben, whose team was tasked with collecting feedback and presenting it to management, says there was rarely any response when they reported issues.

“A lot of the points we were touching on were ignored and never acted upon,” he says.

Studio culture also discourages people from speaking out, says his former colleague, co-producer Margarita “Marge” Peluso.

Marge, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, says her own attempts to raise concerns were “ridiculous” in meetings with her bosses.

Employees also accuse Mr. Benzies of micromanaging the studio, a process allegedly described in a file The video was uploaded on MindsEye’s official YouTube account.

It shows the director instructing a viewer to write down a problem he noticed while playing the game.

The developers say this was a regular occurrence, leading to what Ben and Marg claim were known within the studio as “Leslie Tickets.”

Jimmy says they’ve also heard them referred to as “Leslie bugs” or simply “Leslies.”

The developers told Newsbeat that these issues could range from minor cosmetic issues to instructions to abandon entire missions from the game, and there was an expectation that they would be given the highest priority.

“It didn’t matter what else you were doing, or what else you were working on, Leslie’s ticket had to be taken care of,” Ben says.

This practice led to instability and prevented teams from “taking ownership of their work,” says Jamie.

The decision to launch MindsEye in June 2025 led to a period of “crunch” – a gaming industry term for mandatory overtime, the developers say.

They say this means an additional eight hours of unpaid overtime per week for the majority of employees – although some employees are exempt.

Marge says the crisis began in mid-February and continued until May, with workers eventually being promised seven hours of vacation for every eight hours of overtime worked, to be taken after MindsEye was released.

“People felt like they were being told to do a lot for the company and not have a lot in return,” says Marge.

Ben claims that some departments, such as the quality assurance team, have been particularly affected, with some employees suffering physically and mentally as a result of “stress and pressure”.

Former audio programmer Isaac Hood says that “bugs start piling up” during a crisis, and he says that “regressions,” where one team fixes a bug only to have another team inadvertently bring it back to life, are becoming increasingly common.

“She’s messing with you,” he says. “You really started to see morale go down, and little arguments started to happen.

“People burn the candle at both ends and start thinking: What’s the point of this?”

Marge says many at the studio expected MindsEye to receive negative reception upon release, describing the approach to its release as “everyone holding their breath.”

However, staff gathered at Barb’s Edinburgh studio to celebrate the launch of MindsEye on 10 June.

“Everyone was drinking champagne and having a good time, which was… heartwarming, I think,” says Marge.

“At the same time, I really felt like this was the last good thing that would happen.”

The celebrations were short-lived.

Barb didn’t share advance copies of MindsEye with reviewers, but as early impressions of the game started to trickle in, the mood soured.

Players who purchased the game on release day experienced major performance issues and reported numerous bugs, including walkers that appeared to walk through the air, and in one highly cited example, a character’s face appeared to dissolve due to a graphical glitch.

Twitch streamer CohhCarnage told viewers he was instructed to cancel a sponsored launch day stream at the last minute, as news of the game’s problems spread.

Audio programmer Isaac says he maintained some optimism in the lead-up to the release, but started to lose hope fairly quickly.

“You’d just see disastrous review after disastrous review and think, ‘This is not going to go well,'” he says.

Marge says the team spent the next two weeks working on “hot fixes” — small, targeted updates to address major issues — until management informed them they were at risk of being laid off.

This month, between 250 and 300 Barb employees lost their jobs, with the bulk of those roles based in Edinburgh, according to the Gamesworkers branch of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB).

The union, which wrote the open letter on behalf of 93 employees, said it also plans to take legal action against Barb for what it called “catastrophic mishandling” in the redundancy process.

Ben, a union member, says he accepted the voluntary layoff, but fellow members Marge and Isaac, who were laid off, say they are unhappy with the way their departure was handled.

Barb said in a statement that employees “poured passion, creativity, and hard work into our games and our studio,” adding that she was “deeply saddened” and “did not anticipate having to lay off staff after launch.”

It said it had handled the redundancy process “carefully and transparently,” fulfilling all its obligations, and that it was “committed to learning and growing” from former employees’ comments.

In response to complaints about the studio’s leadership, workplace culture and allegations of “internal and external” forces working against the studio, Barb said: “Leslie and the entire senior management team take full responsibility for the soft launch. [of MindsEye].

“The version of the game that was released did not reflect the experience our community deserves.”

It said it remains committed to “ultimately delivering MindsEye as the game we always envisioned it to be — and the one game players are excited to play.”

The statement added that the studio has already released updates to address the issues, and is working on “improvements” and “new content.”

Former workers who spoke to BBC Newsbeat say they doubt MindsEye’s ability to recover from its launch.

They are also pessimistic about their future prospects and those of their former colleagues in an industry that has seen tens of thousands of jobs lost over the past three years.

The impact will be felt in the Scottish development landscape too, says Ben.

“It’s really sad to see what could have been a great opportunity for the industry here go to waste,” he says.

Despite the negativity surrounding MindsEye and Barb, Isaac says, some of his colleagues were “incredibly talented” and “some of the best people” he has ever worked with.

Marge says they decided to speak out because of these colleagues — and in the hope that something would change.

“We all know each other, and we know how much we’re worth,” Marge says. “We need to stand together.”

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