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The IWGB union have held a protest with former Build a Rocket Boy (BARB) staff outside of the MindsEye studio’s offices. The union accused the company of hosting an expenses-paid fan playtest event following layoffs, with IWGB chair Spring McParlin-Jones dubbing it “a kick in the teeth for the fired workers who are seeing fans brought in to do jobs that would otherwise have been theirs”.
As highlighted by People Make Games’ Chris Bratt, the IWGB held the protest outside of Build a Rocket Boy’s offices in Scotland on Saturday, July 11th.
“This extravagant playtest event is a waste of money, and a kick in the teeth for the fired workers who are seeing fans brought in to do jobs that would otherwise have been theirs,” McParlin-Jones said in a statement to Bratt. The crux of the issue is that, according to the union, the playtest attendees had travel covered by BARB.
Game workers protested outside the Build A Rocket Boy offices on Saturday, as the studio hosted a playtesting event for fans.
BARB has laid off 250-300 employees over the last 13 months & has been accused of installing surveillance software on workers’ PCs to root out “saboteurs” within the company[image or embed]
— Chris Bratt (@chrisbratt.bsky.social) 13 July 2026 at 12:30
“They sat by and allowed an entire branch of their company in France to go bankrupt, hoping the government there would clean up their mess,” ex-BARB employee Isaac Hudd said of the company’s co-ceos Mark Gerhard and Leslie Benzies during a speech given at the protest. “They’ve now removed another half of the company, and instead of redundant community managers, they hired a fan from their Discord.
“And now they’ve flown in more of them, on BARB’s ever-dwindling dime, to playtest an online game that could be played from anywhere. It would be a nice gesture in most companies, but after the lies, the fear, the stress and ignoring damned near every attempt to make things right from their ex-employees, it’s nothing more than a kick in the teeth to those they’ve abandoned.”
I’ve reached out to Build a Rocket Boy for comment.
Since MindsEye’s release last June, the story at Build a Rocket Boy has been a whirlwind that’s almost beggared belief at times. Alongside the all too real layoffs, there exec Gerhard has been alleging the game was sabotaged, even claiming to have worked evidence of that fact into the Hitman-esque mission added to the game earlier this year, Blacklisted. Meanwhile, the IWGB have accused BARB management of breaking the law via the installation of surveillance software onto staff PCs as part of an effort to catch alleged saboteurs.
