MindsEye publisher IO Interactive has suggested that the game's disastrous launch may have made the studio think twice about taking on third-party publishing contracts in the future.
Speaking to IGN, IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak said that while his studio will continue to publish its own games, whether or not the IOI Partners label publishes any more third-party games "remains to be seen".
Just in case you need a reminder, MindsEye, which is the debut project from the "multinational" studio Build a Rocket Boy, was IO Interactive's first external publishing effort, and it's safe to say the game's launch didn't exactly go as either studio had hoped it would.
MindsEye was released earlier this year to a roundly negative reception, with its messy launch encountering widely-reported technical issues, leading to developer Build a Rocket Boy severing a planned sponsorship with streamer CohhCarnage, as well as PlayStation issuing rare refunds to players.
The launch of the game went so poorly that Build a Rocket Boy announced later that month that it would lay off over 100 employees, which, according to an IGN report, constituted around a third of the studio's headcount at the time.
IO Interactive CEO Abrak described MindsEye's launch as "definitely tough"; he said the release "wasn't what [Build a Rocket Boy] hoped for, and also what we didn't hope for at IOI Partners".
Despite that, Abrak says that Build a Rocket Boy is "working hard on turning that around to regain the trust" of disgruntled players, and that MindsEye has "tons of potential and content" in the pipeline. We'll have to wait and see if any of that comes to fruition.
IO Interactive's third-party publishing efforts may be on hold for the moment, but the studio is powering ahead with publishing its own releases, the next of which is March's 007 First Light. Here's hoping that launch goes better than MindsEye's.
