{"id":61487,"date":"2026-09-25T19:33:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T19:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/mindseye-ex-gta-developers-studio-faces-closure\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T19:33:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T19:33:42","slug":"mindseye-ex-gta-developers-studio-faces-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/mindseye-ex-gta-developers-studio-faces-closure\/","title":{"rendered":"MindsEye: Ex-GTA developer’s studio faces closure"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Benzies set up Barb in 2016 – the same year he left Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games after a legal row over unpaid royalties.<\/p>\n

It began work on Everywhere, intended to be a multiplayer role-playing game set in a futuristic city, before pivoting its focus to action-adventure MindsEye.<\/p>\n

The project attracted a lot of interest and, according to company documents, external<\/span><\/a>, Barb had managed to attract more than \u00a3233m of investment by 2024.<\/p>\n

Former staff previously told BBC Newsbeat<\/a> the development process had “no coherent direction” and accused senior managers of failing to listen to their concerns.<\/p>\n

Following the game’s turbulent launch, between 250 to 300 members of staff were made redundant.<\/p>\n

Shortly before this, during an all-staff call, Benzies alleged “internal and external” forces had conspired to hinder MindsEye’s release, and vowed to root out “saboteurs” within the company.<\/p>\n

When Newsbeat asked Barb about this, it released a statement saying: “Leslie and the entire senior management team take full responsibility for the initial launch [of MindsEye].<\/p>\n

“The version of the game that was released did not reflect the experience our community deserved.”<\/p>\n

Since its release, the company has failed to attract a bigger audience to the game with a series of fixes and content updates.<\/p>\n

After further layoffs, reports last week suggested the remaining workers at the studio had also been let go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Benzies set up Barb in 2016 – the same year he left Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games after a legal row over unpaid royalties. It began work on Everywhere, intended to be a multiplayer role-playing game set in a futuristic city, before pivoting its focus to action-adventure MindsEye. The project attracted a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[279],"tags":[763,7196,16868,616,16867,161],"class_list":["post-61487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsbeat","tag-closure","tag-developers","tag-exgta","tag-faces","tag-mindseye","tag-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61489,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61487\/revisions\/61489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}