Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick told a Wall Street audience on May 27, 2026, that former Rockstar Games employees have repeatedly tried and failed to replicate the studio's blockbuster success — a remark that the gaming industry read as a pointed, if technically unnamed, verdict on MindsEye, the worst-reviewed game of 2025. Speaking at the TD Cowen 54th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Zelnick was asked whether advances in artificial intelligence posed any threat to Rockstar's creative dominance. His answer was a quiet demolition job.
"The folks at Rockstar seem to be able to make these massive hits, and lots of other people have tried," Zelnick said. "Lots and lots, including former Rockstar employees. And so far, they haven't been able to do it."
The remarks arrived with GTA 6 confirmed for a November 19, 2026 release — the most anticipated video game launch in at least a decade, delayed twice from its original 2025 window. Zelnick was not naming names. He did not need to.
MindsEye and Build a Rocket Boy's Disastrous 2025 Debut
The implicit target of Zelnick's comment is Leslie Benzies — once the most powerful producer in video game history, and now the architect of one of the medium's most prominent public failures. Benzies served as president of Rockstar North from 1995 until his departure in 2016, producing every major entry in the Grand Theft Auto series from GTA III through GTA V, a run that accumulated hundreds of millions of sales. His exit was acrimonious: Benzies filed a $150 million lawsuit against Rockstar and Take-Two in April 2016, alleging he was forced out and denied royalties owed under a 2009 profit-sharing agreement. The two sides reached a confidential settlement in February 2019.
Benzies then founded Build a Rocket Boy, an Edinburgh-based studio that spent years developing Everywhere — a high-fidelity gaming platform pitched as a competitor to Roblox and Fortnite's creative modes. MindsEye, a single-player action-adventure game released June 10, 2025, was designed as the platform's proof-of-concept debut. It became the worst-reviewed mainstream game of the year on Metacritic, with a critic score of 37 out of 100 — lower than all but a handful of games released in the prior five years — and a user score of 2.5 out of 10. Sony and Epic both issued mass refunds for the title, a rare intervention previously reserved for Cyberpunk 2077's catastrophic 2020 launch.
What Went Wrong After the Ambitious Build-Up
Before MindsEye launched, Benzies was making sweeping promises. He described plans to add multiplayer and player-created content that would eventually transform Everywhere into a platform rivaling industry giants.
Reality fell sharply short. Players encountered pervasive bugs, graphical glitches, and a 30-frames-per-second performance cap that even the PS5 Pro could not stabilize. Publisher IO Interactive, whose Partners label backed the game, ultimately severed its relationship with Build a Rocket Boy entirely, scrapping a planned Hitman crossover in the process.
Leadership's response to the collapse deepened the damage. In a July 2, 2025 video call with staff — reported by IGN — Benzies blamed the game's failure on "internal and external saboteurs," a claim that landed poorly with employees who had reportedly endured months of crunch to ship the game. Co-CEO Mark Gerhard had raised similar allegations before launch, suggesting in a Discord session on May 27, 2025, that a concerted effort was underway to undermine the studio. IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak told IGN he did not believe the game had been sabotaged. A BBC report from October 2025 noted that Build a Rocket Boy employees signed an open letter demanding apologies from Benzies and Gerhard, citing mismanagement. The studio subsequently conducted multiple rounds of layoffs affecting more than 300 employees.
As of April 2026, Gerhard told GamesBeat that the studio is preparing a relaunch, pointing to a new mission called "Blacklist" that he claims will present evidence of the alleged sabotage — and that sales are "increasing organically, doubling almost weekly." At the time IGN published that reporting, 11 people were actively playing MindsEye on Steam.
Why Did Former Rockstar Employees Struggle to Replicate GTA's Success?
Zelnick offered his own theory for Rockstar's unreplicable run, which extends across GTA V (one of the best-selling video games of all time), Red Dead Redemption 2, and GTA Online — still generating 5 million units of GTA V sales per quarter, more than a decade after its release. The answer, he argued, has nothing to do with technology — a direct rebuke of the premise that AI tools or improved engines could allow competitors to close the gap.
"It won't be technology that changes the game," Zelnick said. "What'll change is that some extraordinarily creative individual or individuals will show up and do something astonishing. Our goal is to get those people to work within the Take-Two system. If we fail to do that, we fail."
The statement is as much a warning as a boast. Zelnick acknowledged that Rockstar's dominance is not guaranteed in perpetuity, and that a challenger could emerge — but only through a quality of creative vision that, in his assessment, institutional machines produce more reliably than individuals working outside them. It is an argument about the organization, not the talent, and it reframes what happened to Build a Rocket Boy: Benzies did not fail because he lacked ability. He failed, in this reading, because the machine that made his talent matter was no longer behind him.
Lessons for the Broader Games Industry
The MindsEye story is not the first time the industry has watched a celebrated creator struggle to reproduce success without the institutional infrastructure that originally amplified their work. The pattern stretches back decades — developers who left storied studios with impeccable portfolios and found that the system around them had been doing more work than their credits suggested.
What makes the Benzies case unusually legible is the scale of the failure: MindsEye is not simply a game that underperformed against high expectations; it is documented as one of the lowest-rated mainstream releases of the past five years. The credentials were as strong as they come. The result is one of gaming's starkest recent illustrations that creative talent does not travel in isolation.
Zelnick, to his credit, stopped short of triumphalism. "Doesn't mean they can't in the future, by the way," he said of the former Rockstar talent he had just implicitly addressed. "We're always running scared."
The comment landed the way it was probably intended — as the confident magnanimity of a man whose company is five months from the biggest entertainment launch of the decade, and who can afford to be generous.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick say about former Rockstar employees?
Speaking at the TD Cowen 54th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on May 27, 2026, Zelnick said that many former Rockstar employees have tried to replicate the studio's blockbuster success but have not yet succeeded. He did not name any individual or studio directly, but the remarks were widely interpreted as referring to Build a Rocket Boy, founded by former Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies, whose game MindsEye became the worst-reviewed game of 2025 on Metacritic.
What is MindsEye and why did it fail?
MindsEye is a single-player action-adventure game released June 10, 2025, by Build a Rocket Boy — the studio founded by former GTA producer Leslie Benzies. It launched to severe criticism due to persistent bugs, performance issues, and a 30-fps performance cap unstable even on next-generation hardware, earning a Metacritic critic score of 37 and a user score of 2.5 out of 10. Both Sony and Epic issued mass refunds, and the game finished 2025 as Metacritic's lowest-rated mainstream release of the year.
When does GTA 6 come out?
Grand Theft Auto 6 is confirmed for a November 19, 2026 release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has reaffirmed the date multiple times in 2026, most recently during the company's fiscal Q4 earnings call on May 21. Rockstar's full marketing campaign, including the anticipated Trailer 3 and pre-order opening, is expected to begin in late June 2026. No PC release date has been announced.
Why did Leslie Benzies leave Rockstar Games?
Benzies departed Rockstar North in 2016 after returning from a sabbatical that began in September 2014. His exit was contested: Benzies filed a $150 million lawsuit against Rockstar and parent company Take-Two Interactive in April 2016, alleging he was forced out and denied profit-sharing royalties. Rockstar disputed his claims and filed a counter-suit. The litigation was resolved through a confidential settlement in February 2019.
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