Union workers are filing legal action against MindsEye studio Build a Rocket Boy, over what it claims was “disastrous handling of redundancies”.
In June it was reported that the Edinburgh-based studio had started the process of laying off numerous staff, following the disastrous launch of MindsEye on June 10.
Now the Game Workers branch of the Independent Workers of Great Britain union are filing “multiple legal actions” against the studio, accusing it of “failure to carry out fair consultation ahead of redundancies as well as multiple cases of unfair dismissal”.
The announcement was accompanied by an open letter, representing former and current employees of Build a Rocket Boy, accusing the studio of “longstanding disrespect and mistreatment of your staff”.
The open letter estimates that “a UK majority of 250-300 workers across the company” have been laid off, and claims the studio is at fault, saying: “These layoffs happened because you repeatedly refused to listen to your workforce’s years of experience, resulting in one of the worst video game launches this decade.”
The letter accuses the studio of numerous issues, including:
- A lack of transparency and communication: “Information has been sparse and vague, with you often making radical changes to the way we worked with little or no input from those affected.”
- Overtime that reached “unbearable levels”, with a mandatory eight hours per week in the four months leading up to the release of MindsEye. It claims that Time Off in Lieu was given at a rate of 7 hours off for every 8 hours worked, but says “many have still not been able to take this time off due to your continued requests for extra ‘high-priority’ work, even after launch”.
- A mishandling of the redundancy process: “Employees have received misinformation, been handed dismissal notices with the wrong notice periods, and been put in the wrong teams so that their performances were scored by the wrong people. These and other errors have potentially resulted in the wrongful dismissal of dozens of staff members.”
The letter states that Build a Rocket Boy co-CEOs Leslie Benzies and Mark Gerhard “need to take a backseat and allow the skilled people who remain at the company to forge the path ahead”, and makes the following four demands:
- “A public apology for this mistreatment of employees and proper compensation for laid-off employees.”
- “The option for remaining employees on redundancy notice to either work their notice period or take Payment in Lieu of Notice (PILON).”
- “A concerted, meaningful, and documented effort to improve conditions and processes within the company, including the acknowledgement of the IWGB as a trade union.”
- “A commitment to use official external partners to action any future redundancies and prevent unfair treatment.”
The release of MindsEye on June 10 was followed by social media being flooded with videos of the game’s technical issues and bugs. The situation deteriorated to the extent that PlayStation started refunding multiple players, a rare occurrence that previously took place during the troubled launch of Cyberpunk 2077, before it was pulled from sale entirely.
The game’s Metacritic score currently stands at 38 for the PC version and just 28 for the PS5 version, making it the lowest rated game on Metacritic so far this year and significantly lower than any game on Metacritic last year too.