007 First Light developer reflects on publishing MindsEye, 2025’s worst game

For most of its history, IO Interactive has primarily been a developer above all else. The studio finally decided to enter the publishing space ahead of the release of 007 First Light. While it’s still self-publishing that James Bond game, its attempt to publish a game from an external studio did not go well.

In June, British studio Build a Rocket Boy and IOI Partners released MindsEye, a sci-fi shooter with user-generated content elements. It ended up becoming the worst-reviewed game of 2025. Now, as he promotes 007 First Light, IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak has finally had to address the failure of MindsEye.

What did IO Interactive say about MindsEye’s disastrous launch

“That was definitely tough”

MindsEye was the first game from a new studio called Build A Rocket Boy, which was founded by developers who had worked on classic Grand Theft Auto games. It’s a single-player sci-fi first-person shooter, albeit one that the developers hoped would have some live service potential, with tools the studio and players could use to create additional content.

The promise of that quickly faded away upon its release, though. MindsEye quickly became the worst-reviewed game of 2025 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic due to its nonsensical story and plethora of bugs and performance issues. Build a Rocket Boy has been constantly updated it in the months since, but it’s still unequivocally seen as the year’s worst game.

At a preview event for 007 First Light, IGN directly asked Abrak about the MindsEye situation. He had the following to say:

Well, that was definitely tough, right? It was a tough reception. It wasn’t what they hoped for, and also what we didn’t hope for at IOI Partners. They’re working hard on turning that game around to regain the trust of the gamers out there and they have tons of potential and content they’re working on. So hopefully they’ll succeed with that in the future…So, IO Interactive will publish our own games internally. IOI Partners? That remains to be seen.

Abrak’s statement makes it clear that IO Interactive is clearly disappointed in how the title was received, even if he’s optimistic that Build a Rocket Boy can turn things around. It also seems like IO Interactive will be focusing more on its own games, like 007 First Light, for the foreseeable future, rather than games from external studios.

But why did IO Interactive even back MindsEye in the first place? Even ahead of its release, I remember being a little confused by how the game was trying to blend single-player shooter and live service game elements and was unimpressed by the gameplay clips I’d seen.

Abrak thought definitely, telling IGN that IO Interactive liked Build a Rocket Boy’s “great ideas and a great world in the background that they were building,” so it “wanted to help them distribute the game.”

Ultimately, this partnership resulted in the worst game of the year, something on the complete opposite end of the critical spectrum than Donkey Kong Bananza. We can only hope that 007 First Light is more polished when it launches next March.