We have some disappointing rumors about Build A Rocket Boy and MindsEye.
Yesterday, we reported on Build A Rocket Boy officially confirming that they would start the 45 day consultation period for redundancies. This means that the studio will have a large number of layoffs, but there was a lot more into the UK laws that govern this than we initially knew.
The UK law actually lays out rules to protect UK workers from layoffs. Under this law, new employees go through a probationary period between three to nine months when the employer decides if they are suitable for their roles. If these employees go past probation, employers have to give them redundancy pay if they decide to lay them off. The flip side to this is the employers can lay off new employees within probation, even as many as 50 employees, without giving out redundancy pay. They don’t even have to give a reason for the layoffs, as it is assumed this is a reasonable timeframe to decide in good faith if they should be hired.
YouTuber CYBER BOI shares new allegations that Build A Rocket Boy have been taking advantage of these UK law exceptions to their own benefit. If his sources are accurate, the studio has been deliberately hiring probationary employees, only to lay them off just before they have to give out redundancy pay. If this is all true, what changed now is the market failure of MindsEye. It means they actually need to lay off staff because they can’t afford to keep them all on.
So, when some new outlets refer to Build A Rocket Boy ‘triggering’ the 90 day consultation period, this was what it meant. By laying off 100 employees, they went past the threshold the UK law considers reasonable for normal day-to-day activities. For this reason, the law has stepped in to ensure that all these layoffs are reasonable, and the studios has to help them find new jobs if possible.
CYBER BOI also alleges that these probationary employees, which could be in unimaginable numbers, were treated poorly by Build A Rocket Boy. This isn’t just about exploiting the redundancy clause in UK law. His sources told him new developers would get stonewalled in their job, in the pretense of being given new tasks. In the scenario he outlined, a developer would be given a task to finish up to 10 %, and then be told by management to shift to a new task, to also partly complete, and then have the cycle repeat until they get laid off the day before the redundancy clause is triggered.
In this way, Build A Rocket Boy may have acquired hours of work for comparatively lower wages, especially since they could minimize the number of full time employees. But then again, if this was really how they went about game development, this may be the reason that MindsEye turned out the way it did.
For now, these are allegations and rumors, but it also is hard to ignore that it seems so plausible because of the end result. Perhaps Leslie Benzies and Build A Rocket Boy should get in front of these rumors and make their own statement, to assure the public and their fans that they aren’t what these rumors are making them out to be.
In the meantime, you can watch CYBER BOI’s video below.
