Dev Behind Last Year’s Big Flop Is Still Paying Streamers To Play It

Someone at either developer Build a Rocket Boy or publisher IO Interactive hasn’t given up on MindsEye, because several high-profile content creators are still being sponsored to play the game following its December 2025 patch.

As spotted by FRVR, YouTube creator and Twitch streamer Criken, whose channel currently boasts over 1 million subscribers, recently uploaded a sponsored video of their MindsEye playthrough on January 14. While Twitch and YouTube are full of sponsored video game playthroughs, Criken’s video has people scratching their heads since MindsEye has barely peaked above 30 concurrent players on Steam since its disastrous June 2025 release.

Several commenters on Criken’s video were shocked to discover that the creator isn’t just playing the game as a joke. “Oh I thought you were playing this because it’s basically a meme at this point, I can’t believe they’re still sponsoring people,” wrote Didorial. “They’re still sponsoring? I’m impressed that the company wants to keep this game alive. (7 current players on steam btw),” wrote Dazcoolman.

Stranger still, he’s not the only high-profile creator who seems to be getting paid to produce new videos for the lousy open-world shooter at the moment. A quick browse through the #MindsEyePartner tag on YouTube shows that YouTubers like SweeetTails, Blue Thunder Gaming, and Willyrex (the latter of whom has over 17.2 million subscribers) have all been sponsored to play the game in the last month following its version 6.1 patch on December 18. According to Blue Thunder Gaming, the PR team that reached out with the sponsorship even agreed up front to let creators “say whatever [they] want” about the game.

Sponsored streams were also a part of the marketing strategy around MindsEye‘s original launch, but ended up resulting in viral moments that only further solidified the shooter’s reputation for being boring and busted. Twitch streamer CohhCarnage was even asked to cancel his sponsored livestream of the game mere minutes after he’d just told his viewers it was about to begin.

This all leads to the inevitable question: why? To be frank, I don’t have an answer for you, as the sponsored videos and streams don’t seem to have made much difference to the player numbers on Steam. Maybe things are going better on console. Admittedly, the game does look to be in a better state now than it was at launch, but I think the damage has already been done. A Cyberpunk 2077 turnaround story this is not. At least for now.