Yesterday, Build A Rocket Boy – the studio helmed by Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies – showed off some gameplay from the GTA-ish, Cyberpunk-ish, FarCry map editor-ish action thriller MindsEye, which is set to let you shoot a bunch of evil AI robots. Now, BARB’s co-ceo has claimed that there’s a real life “concerted effort to trash the game and the studio” going on, involving evil bots.
Yep, he seemingly just suggested these things were the case via some responses to players on the game’s Discord server, as you’d expect an exec to casually do.
Mark Gerhard, the co-ceo in question, goes by the handle MMG in the server, and was asked during a bit of back and forth about the game with fans: “Do you think that all the people who reacted negatively were financed by someone?” He responded: “100%”
Naturally, folks were a bit taken aback by an exec at a studio seemingly suggesting negative reception for a game had been paid for in some fashion, but Gerhard went on to add: “doesn’t take much to guess who”. A user in the server was quick to comment: “a co-CEO for a studio implying another studio is paying previewers to talk negatively about your game is an absolutely wild comment to make in a public environment in any situation”, to which the exec replied: “Not wild when it’s true…..”
Fans and content creators in the server who’d expressed criticism of MindsEye or Build A Rocket Boy then started to question whether Gerhard might be talking about them, leading the co-ceo to respond to such questions being asked about a user with the handle Cyber Boi.
“Folks I never said Cyber Boi was being paid by anyone,” Gerhard wrote, “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. Its pretty easy to see the bots and the repeated replies to any content that we put out.”
GTA YouTuber GameRoll then asked him directly: “So just to clarify – you believe that individuals, be it content creators or otherwise, have been paid off to criticise Mindseye?” “No I never said that,” Gerhard responded, “I do KNOW that there are bot farms posting negative comments and dislikes.”
VG247 has reached out to Build A Rocket Boy and MindsEye publisher IO Interactive for comment.
Are you keen to give MindsEye a go when it arrives on June 10? Let us know below!