Build A Rocket Boy Limited

Friday the 25th of September.

Edinburgh-based Build a Rocket Boy in administration after cutting 300 jobs.

Written by Alistair Ferguson.

A Scottish game studio launched by one of the main producers of the Grand Theft Auto series has fallen into the administration after it made hundreds of employees redundant.

Among those who said they had been made redundant last week was production QA analyst Cameron Deaves, who said his time in the studio was coming to an end, along with level designer BM Shannon and release manager Michaela Emsley.

Dan Hawkins, Barb's principal talent acquisition partner in HR operations, also implied the rest of the team in the studio had been made redundant.

With a very heavy heart, I raised my green LinkedIn Open to Work banner, along with the rest of my colleagues at Build a Rocket Boy, he wrote on his social media account.

I am open to work, actively looking for a new adventure.

To give the quickest possible synopsis of the game, it's a sci-fi third-person action game.

It was created by a team called Build A Rocket Boy, who were made up of many ex-Rockstar developers who left after GTA V.

It was really hyped.

It had a disastrous launch.

If you try and engage with it as the audience it courted wanted to, or in the markets which it actually released in 2025, you are gonna be pretty let down.

[laughs] I think a lot of people...

Literally this week, Build a Rocket Boy announced their closure.

[laughs]

And sometimes it's only like a day or two later and it feels too late because I'm already six, seven hours in.

yep is the way um if you've played game of the year mind's eye uh you'll be saddened to know that build a rocket boy the development have entered into administration uh according to the skull but um Yes, the existing management has been dismissed.

A new team comes in to see if the company as a whole can be sold, liquidated, or determined if there's just nothing to salvage

at all.

Italian.

In what could be the end of a saga of news that I might miss, but not really, Build a Rocket Boy, the developers of Minds Eye are back in the news because they're going through another round of layoffs.

But based on social media posts from former employees, it is extremely possible that the studio might get shut down entirely.

rip to the ceo of that who said our game is gonna be the gta killer yeah brother brother please

Although many of the posts give a shout out to others affected or some fellow colleagues, lead weapon designer Adam Rizdal was one of the only posts to mention how vast the layoffs were, saying, quote, along with the rest of my colleagues at BuilderRocketBoy, I am facing redundancy and now looking for a new opportunity and This is supported by a now-deleted post from acquisition partner and HR operations lead Dan Hawkins, seen by GamesIndustry.biz, that said, These redundancies came after three previous rounds of layoffs starting in June 2025, and IO Partners ending its publishing deal with Builder Rocket Boy in March of 2026.

Remember that the co-CEO of Build A Rocket Boy, Mark Gerhard, was running a campaign claiming that, quote, criminal activity, organized espionage, and sabotage, end quote, allegedly played a part in the disappointing launch and overwhelmingly negative reviews.

As always, I hope the affected crew find new work and stability.

But with everything surrounding the release of this game and its reception at launch, this feels like a bit of an inevitable outcome.

Deconstructing a rocket boy.

Yeah, so the team's called Build a Rocket Boy.

They're closing down and the headline is Deconstructing a Rocket Boy.

You don't even think about them.

We're going to go through all the Xbox changes.

The Minds Eye studio closes, so Build a Rocket Boy, sadly, comes to an end.

And then Applovin CEO Adam is on a speaker circuit.

He is just going everywhere and talking after not really being very public.

Um-

I mean, all the layoffs are at Mind's [laughs] Eye is develop, Build a Rocket Boy.

[laughs]

Yeah.

It, or f- sorry, it's Build a Rocket Boy, but it's just like, it's because of Mind's Eye.

[laughs] But still-

Right