The IWGB union held a protest with former Build a Rocket Boy (BARB) staff outside the MindsEye studio offices. The union accused the company of holding a test event for fans after layoffs, with IWGB president Spring McParlin-Jones calling it “a kick in the teeth to laid-off workers who see fans brought in to do jobs that otherwise would have been theirs.”
As pointed out People make games“Chris Bratt of the IWGB organized a protest outside the Build a Rocket Boy offices in Scotland on Saturday July 11.
“This extravagant testing event is a waste of money and a kick in the teeth to laid-off workers who see fans made to do tasks that otherwise would have been theirs,” McParlin-Jones said in a statement to Bratt. The crux of the matter is that, according to the union, the playtest participants had their travel covered by BARB.
Game workers protested outside the Build A Rocket Boy offices on Saturday, as the studio held a playtesting event for fans. BARB has fired 250 to 300 employees over the past 13 months and has been accused of installing surveillance software on workers’ computers to weed out “saboteurs” within the company.
—Chris Bratt (@chrisbratt.bsky.social) July 13, 2026 at 12:30 p.m.
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“They stood there and allowed a branch of their company in France “They have now removed another half of the company, and instead of fired community managers, they hired a fan from their Discord.
“And now they’ve flown more of them in, at BARB’s dwindling expense, to test an online game that could be played from anywhere. It would be a nice gesture at most companies, but after the lies, fear, stress, and ignorance of almost all of their ex-employees’ attempts to make things right, it’s nothing more than a kick in the teeth to those they abandoned.”
I’ve reached out to Build a Rocket Boy for comment.
Since the release of MindsEye last June, the story of Build a Rocket Boy has been a whirlwind that is sometimes beyond belief. Alongside the very real layoffs, director Gerhard has alleged that the game was sabotaged, even claiming to have evidence of this in the Hitman-esque mission added to the game earlier this year, Blacklisted. Meanwhile, the IWGB accused BARB management of breaking the law by installing surveillance software on staff computers as part of an effort to stop suspected saboteurs.
