Build a Rocket Boy CEO Mark Gerhard says that the studio is preparing to add a new mission to its game, MindsEye, which will include “evidence” supporting his repeated claims that the game was sabotaged by bad actors.
Speaking to GamesBeat, Gerhard claims that the new mission will be called Blacklist, and will feature a female playable character. “We’re also using that to share some of the evidence of the sabotage with the community.” He did not provide further information as to what this would entail, however, he previously told Insider Gaming that the studio was also planning to use the names of people who had committed the alleged sabotage in the new mission.
“And let’s have some fun with it,” he said at the time. “Let’s tell the community the story before it even plays out in court. So, you know, I think this is not us being the victim.
“We’ve taken a couple of punches. We’ve kept turning the other cheek while we got our house in order. And now it’s time to start judoing this right back at them. And, you know, so let’s have some fun with it. At the end of the day, we’re storytellers, we’re game makers.”
The sabotage Gerhard is referring to is his claims over the last year that there was a “concerted effort” to “trash the game and the studio” by both internal and external saboteurs. He claims that the saboteurs paid off influencers or paid for spam bots to denegrate the game on social platforms. Gerhard has yet to provide evidence to back up these claims, and former publisher IO Interactive has denied their merit.
In the same GamesBeat interview, Gerhard said that authorities in both the US and UK were investigating what he believes to be criminal, corporate espionage.
“We’ve got very strong evidence of this and conducted quite thorough investigations over the months since launch,” he said. “We’ve identified parties involved, and it’s now with the authorities both UK and US to deal with. 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.”
Gerhard does admit that the game launched in a messy state, with numerous bugs and crashes. He tells GamesBeat that these issues are “on us” and that the team is continuing to invest in the game and improve it. “We’re very excited about this next chapter,” he said. “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.”
To that end, studio head and former GTA 5 producer Leslie Benzies is back from an extended vacation taken after the game’s launch, he says, though he also suggests the studio isn’t done with layoffs, even after two rounds of them. Gerhard also alleges that the game is being “very well-reviewed” (its current Metacritic score is 39, and user score is 2.6, it has a “mixed” score on Steam, and we gave it a 4/10) and that “sales are increasing organically, doubling almost weekly.” (At the time this piece was written, 11 people were playing MindsEye on Steam).
Earlier this month, it was announced that IO Interactive was handing off all its publishing responsibilities to Build a Rocket Boy, and that its planned Hitman crossover event was being canceled.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
This article was updated post publication to add more context on the mission from a past interview.
