When you have an action game directed by the former lead developer of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, chances are, expectations for it will be sky-high. Unfortunately, in the case of the upcoming action gameMindsEye, it seems to have worked the other way around.
MindsEye’s development is being directed by Leslie Benzies, the former president of Rockstar North, and he acted as the lead developer of Grand Theft Auto 3 up to GTA V. Unfortunately for Benzies and the studio, the reception for MindsEye so far has been less than stellar.
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MindsEye’s Poor Reception Due To Paid Marketing Efforts
Mark Gerhard, the co-CEO of the studio developing MindsEye, suggests that the negative reaction is due to a paid smear campaign against his studio.
Previews for the game went up recently, and so far, impressions haven’t exactly been glowing. Over onTwitter/X,one user summarized some of the negative feedback, which mentioned:
It is important to note that this isn’t an early build of MindsEye that was previewed, as the game is set for release in a few weeks, on July 03, 2025.
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On the game’s Discord channel, Gerhard has claimed that the reason for the game’s bad reception is that these people are paid to do it. Speaking to members of their Discord, Gerhard was asked whether he believed the negative reaction was financed by certain individuals, to which the studio executive replied, “100 percent.”
Gerhard even adds that “it doesn’t take much to guess who,” though failed to name any individuals or companies. There’s a screenshot as proof of this conversation (viaEurogamer):
Gerhard further stirred the pot by stating, “I just said that there is a concerted effort by some people that don’t want to see Leslie or Build A Rocket Boy to be successful that are making a concerted effort to trash the game and the studio. It’s pretty easy to see the bots and the repeated replies to any content that we put out.”
While some might say that Gerhard is just paranoid or they’re covering up the fact that their game failed to impress people, in this day and age? Yes, it’d be relatively easy to hire people to bombard a game with negative comments and the like.
Hopefully, MindsEye won’t be affected that much when it’s released on June 10 for the PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
