Developer Build a Rocket Boy is pitching a Cyberpunk 2077-style comeback story for its open-world game MindsEye, but without the comeback. CEO Mark Gerhard admits that the game, one of the most poorly rated releases of 2025, had a spectacularly bad launch but claims the bland shooter has finally turned a corner.
“We’re very excited about this next chapter,” he told GamesBeat in a new interview this week. “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.” He added, “The game is being very well-reviewed. The sales are increasing organically, doubling almost weekly.”
Steam data tells a different story. MindsEye received only 89 new user reviews in the last 30 days, giving it a “mixed” rating of just 67 percent. “Never have I ever had a game where I didn’t only care about the story, but also wanted to finish it so fast because that is how bad this is,” reads one user who recently bought the game while it was 70 percent off. “The idea and concept was decent I guess, but everything else a big mistake.”
While Gerhard fesses up to the game being a buggy mess at launch—“We own that as a leadership team and as a studio”—he still maintains that MindsEye‘s reputation as one of the worst games ever was primarily fueled by bad actors trying to intentionally sabotage the studio and its projects. The executive has long insinuated the existence of a conspiracy among disgruntled employees, leakers, and content creators to undermine MindsEye‘s launch and now claims the police are pursuing possible legal action against unnamed suspects.
“We’ve identified parties involved, and it’s now with the authorities both U.K. and U.S. to deal with,” Gerhard said. “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 path.”
One of the falsehoods he takes aim at is the idea that MindsEye was one of the “world’s most refunded games.” “None of that’s true, just a negative or malicious narrative that was amplified,” he told GamesBeat. The refund rate was apparently 2.2 percent on Xbox and 3.2 percent on PlayStation, which he claimed was in line with most other games.
The now infamous stumbles of the studio’s debut blockbuster haven’t hampered its ambitions to still ship a “Roblox for adults” called Everything that includes a suite of intuitive game-making tools coupled with a metaverse-like MMO. “Hindsight is always 20/20,” Gerhard said. “We wish we had more time, wish we had known more ahead of some of this or intervened sooner on certain things. But we’re all human in this.”
