MindsEye Fiasco Continues With Refunds, Clearance Sale Prices
The fallout from MindsEye’s botched launch continues with reports of digital refunds and Walmart already lowering the game’s physical release price to $20. Official reviews have now also started coming in, and it’s currently sitting at an overall 43% rating on Metacritic.
MindsEye is the debut release from Build a Rocket Boy and counts Leslie Benzies, the main dev of GTA V, as a CEO. MindsEye had a troubled production that included not being clear on exactly what the game was supposed to be, and with its launch last week these troubles have now expanded to include abysmal reviews, refunds, and bargain-bin retail prices.
“Found this in the clearance section at my local Walmart for only $20,” Reddit user Rufio1617 posted in the game’s official channel. “Reading through here maybe it isn’t even worth that?”
You Need Users To Create User Generated Content
The base game version of MindsEye currently retails for $59.99 across multiple storefronts, with a Deluxe Edition being sold for $79.99. This fancier version comes with extra character skins, a horde mode mission, and the promise of extra content packs stretching into 2026.
Players have been posting in the MindsEye Reddit channel and official Discord about refunds, with many saying that PlayStation has been operating with a “no questions asked” stance. Out of 16 pages of chat results in the Discord channel, the vast majority directly relate to players claiming refunds on PS5, Xbox and PC. Many are citing “false advertising” as the reason for a refund.
According to SteamDB, MindsEye launched on that platform with 3,302 players. As of the time of writing, this number was at 144 players. Other platforms don’t have an equivalent, so it’s not possible to see player numbers for those, but they’re likely to be extremely low.
Part of the reason for this is that the game is selling at the above prices on all platforms, but the console versions are literally missing half the game: MindsEye on PC includes Build.MindsEye, a proprietary game engine that lets users create their own levels. Xbox and PS5 players don’t have access to this and Build a Rocket Boy is counting on players to create content for its game, as highlighted in game trailers.
Victims of Their Own Hubris
Build a Rocket Boy is not the first game studio to suffer a catastrophic game launch, and it won’t be the last. Inaccurate parallels have been drawn between MindsEye and Cyberpunk 2077, but the core difference here is that the latter announced launch delays and then had to deal with multiple bugs (again, not uncommon with AAA game launches).
CD PROJEKT RED did not promise gamers the moon, which Build a Rocket Boy very clearly did, thanks to a hyperbolic marketing campaign that positioned MindsEye as a unicorn of game design. To say the studio oversold the game doesn’t even scratch the surface of what it claimed.
It would be more accurate to compare MindsEye with The Day Before, from Fntastic. This was sold to players as a high-quality multiplayer survival extraction shooter, and initial trailers were slick and persuasive.
However, upon release (on Dec. 7, 2023) players soon found – like MindsEye – a weirdly empty game world with basic gameplay and a dearth of content. Fntastic then pulled the game from sale just four days after launch.
Too Little Too Late
To Build a Rocket Boy’s credit, the studio is being vocal about patching MindsEye, with a major news update posted online on June 12. In it, the company said it was heartbroken, but that it believed only 1 in 10 players were seriously affected by issues.
“We are heartbroken that not every player was able to experience the game as we intended. Our priority is optimizing performance and stability so that every player, across every device, can enjoy an equally high-quality experience.”
“Our teams have worked tirelessly throughout the night to solve many of these issues, and we have now identified that the vast majority of crashes were caused by a memory leak. This impacted roughly 1 in 10 of our players. We have developed a hotfix that addresses this issue (alongside other issues that our players have highlighted), which we are working hard to deploy as soon as tomorrow on PC and on consoles once it passes certification with PlayStation and Xbox.”
Players have been quick to dismiss these claims, given that Build a Rocket Boy has not responded to any queries, suggestions or complaints on any of its official channels. But, its community moderator on Reddit, Chameleon962, has been active, including posting details of a hotfix on June 13.
It’s entirely possible that MindsEye will be in a much better state in the future, as is common with many games these days but, given the sheer amount of technical issues and lack of content, whether MindsEye will actually be available a year from now is still up in the air.
