IOI Partners has introduced right this moment it’s going to now not publish MindsEye, leaving all publishing rights and obligations within the fingers of developer Construct A Rocket Boy.
As shared in a press launch right this moment, the transition is efficient as of March 16, 2026 and IOI Partners will now not be concerned with MindsEye besides as essential to make the transition occur. As well as, a deliberate crossover occasion between IOI’s Hitman: World of Assassination and MindsEye has been canceled.
IOI peacing out of this is not stunning given the mess that is been MindsEye. The sport was developed by Construct a Rocket Boy, a studio headed up by Leslie Benzies who produced a number of entries in Grand Theft Auto, which lent it vital anticipation. Initially, it was deliberate to be part of In every single place, a kind of “Roblox for adults” that will enable creation of customized recreation experiences inside it. In every single place by no means materialized, however MindsEye itself launched in 2025. It was a flop, incomes a 4/10 from IGN and at the moment sitting at a 38 critic rating on Metacritic, and a 2.6 person rating. It has struggled to seek out an viewers ever since – as of publishing this story, just 17 people are playing it on Steam, and it peaked at merely 3,302 concurrent gamers.
Within the months since, Construct a Rocket Boy has launched a number of patches to repair the sport’s worst efficiency points. Final month, MindsEye obtained its largest patch but, which included extra bug fixes and polish, as nicely as refined AI conduct, nevertheless it has but to introduce promised main content material updates as time has as an alternative been spent fixing what’s already there.
Within the wake of all this, co-CEO Mark Gerhard has repeatedly claimed that there’s a “concerted effort” to “trash the sport and the studio” and has instructed individuals had been being paid to submit unfavorable issues about it, together with pointing the finger at an unnamed different studio. IOI has denied the claims.
The studio has now undergone a number of rounds of layoffs, the latest wave of which concerned Gerhard claiming that the studio was investigating “prison exercise” across the recreation’s launch, saying there was “overwhelming proof” of “organized espionage and company sabotage” in opposition to MindsEye. A gaggle of over 90 employees signed onto an open letter final October demanding an apology from firm management for “mistreatment” of employees as nicely as “correct compensation” for these laid off.
When requested about MindsEye’s disasterous launch, IOI CEO Hakan Abrak merely mentioned, “Effectively, that was positively powerful, proper?” and affirmed it wasn’t the reception IOI had hoped for.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Received a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.