Well, that’s certainly a bold strategy. Mark Gerhard, CEO of MindsEye developers Build a Rocket Boy, has said that the studio are indeed planning to add a new mission to the game which will “share some of the evidence of the sabotage”. That’d be the sabotage from a malevolent third party which the exec’s been alleging MindsEye faced around launch for a while now, with Gerhard also claiming that an investigation into it is currently in the hands of “authorities” in the UK and US.
“We’ve got very strong evidence of this and conducted quite thorough investigations over the months since launch,” Gerhard asserted in an interview with GamesBeat. “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.”
A little later in that chat, he talked about being excited for some future updates coming to MindsEye. One’s focused on multiplayer and then there’s a new mission called Blacklist. “We’re also using that to share some of the evidence of the sabotage with the community,” Gerhard said of this new mission, which adds a playable female character to the game.
While this is the first time Gerhard’s publicly confirmed plans for such a mission to my knowledge, it’s not the first we’ve heard of it. According to reporting from Insider Gaming on a January internal meeting at Build a Rocket Boy, Gerhard teased there that in an effort to “own this narrative” about the alleged sabotage, he planned for BARB to use some of the names of those the studio believe sabotaged the game into an upcoming spy mission. This mission is reportedly a repuposed version of MindsEye’s cancelled Hitman crossover, which bit the dust when Build a Rocket Boy and IO Interactive ended their publishing agreement last month.
As for what’s going on at the studio itself, Gerhard told GamesBeat that following previous layoffs, the company are currently in the process of shrinking their workforce from around 240 staff to around 100. Over 800 people were working at Build a Rocket Boy when it was at its largest. Meanwhile, studio founder Leslie Benzies has recently returned from a break, with Gerhard saying the ex-GTA producer “is actively working with the team on the roadmap” as they work towards re-launching the game now that – in Gerhard’s words – “the interference has stopped”.
