In July this year workers at Build a Rocket Boy, a video game studio in Edinburgh, were called to an all-staff meeting.

Their first ever game, a sci-fi adventure called MindsEye, had been released three weeks earlier - and it had been a total disaster.

Critics and players called it "broken", "buggy", and "the worst game of 2025".

Addressing staff via video link, the company's boss, Leslie Benzies, assured them there was a plan to get things back on track and said the negativity they'd seen was "uncalled for".

Then he pivoted, alleging "internal and external" forces had been working to scupper the MindsEye launch.

He told the assembled workers - who'd been informed they faced redundancy just a week earlier - there would be an effort to root out "saboteurs" within the company.

"I find it disgusting that anyone could sit amongst us, behave like this and continue to work here," he said, according to a transcript of the meeting verified by BBC Newsbeat.

Staff who worked at the studio say they were stunned - and not only by the strength of the language. They simply didn't believe him.

As far as they were concerned, there was no conspiracy - and the reasons for MindsEye's failure were clear.

Mr Benzies is well-known for his work at Rockstar Games where he was a senior figure on the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) action-adventure series, and regarded by many as a key architect of its success.

He left in 2016, three years after the record-breaking launch of GTA 5, sparking a legal row over unpaid royalties that was settled out of court.

In the same year, he set up the company that would become Build a Rocket Boy (Barb). By the end of 2024, it had grown to 448 employees.

Most were based at its main office - a former casino in Leith, Edinburgh - but the company also had studios in Budapest and in the French city of Montpellier.

Former staff say salaries were competitive, the company allowed remote working, and their response to the Covid-19 pandemic was good.

With Mr Benzies at the helm, Barb attracted a lot of interest and, according to documents UK companies are legally required to publish online, had managed to attract more than £233m of investment by 2024.

It had also spent large amounts of money without releasing any products.

Between 2020 and 2024, the company posted losses totalling £202.6m, with its largest for a single year - £59.1m - coming in 2023.

Barb's first project was Everywhere, described by one former employee, Jamie (not their real name), as a multiplayer role-playing game (RPG) based in an open-ended, futuristic city.

"I thought we had something quite special," says Jamie, who left the company in 2022.

To........

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