Build a Rocket Boy, the Edinburgh-based studio behind the troubled MindsEye launch, laid off approximately 170 of its remaining 250 employees in early May 2026. The cuts leave the studio with roughly 80 staff and were confirmed across the gaming press over the May 6 to May 8 window after multiple developers posted public departure notices on LinkedIn. Co-CEO Mark Gerhard had not commented publicly at the time of the initial reports.
The affected roles span QA, level design, audio design, programming, and production. The cuts came just days after Build a Rocket Boy released MindsEye's first DLC, suggesting that the post-launch content roadmap may either be sharply curtailed or transferred to a much smaller maintenance team.
MindsEye launched in 2025 to mixed reviews and well below sales expectations. The game, an ambitious open-world action title from former Rockstar producer Leslie Benzies, was positioned as Build a Rocket Boy's flagship debut after years of development. The commercial reception forced the studio into a defensive posture from its first month on the market.
The May 2026 cut is the third major workforce reduction at the studio in approximately a year. Earlier rounds in June 2025 and March 2026 had already taken the studio from a peak of more than 400 staff down to the pre-cut figure of around 250. The cumulative reduction now exceeds 80% of the studio's headcount peak.
Build a Rocket Boy's collapse is the highest-profile failed-launch retrenchment in European gaming since the Embracer Group restructuring wave of 2023-2024. What separates this case is the velocity. Most failed AAA launches produce a multi-year wind-down. Build a Rocket Boy is on track to go from launch to roughly 20% of peak staffing inside twelve months.
For the broader gaming sector, this fits the same 2026 pattern visible at Epic Games (1,000 cut March 24), Ubisoft / Red Storm (105 cut March 19), and Electronic Arts (multiple rounds across 2025-2026). High-cost AAA projects with weak post-launch engagement no longer support the staffing levels that produced them. The signal worth tracking is whether MindsEye continues live operations at all under the new 80-person team, or whether the studio quietly transitions to a sunset mode. Either outcome would set a template for how mid-2020s post-launch failures are managed in European gaming.