The drama at Build A Rocket Boy continues to be intriguing, albeit in the same way that watching a volcanic eruption near a city would be both horrifying and yet captivating.

This time the company has announced its third round of layoffs. No exact numbers were shared, so it’s unclear how many are affected and how many employees remain at the company.

“Today we are announcing a further number of redundancies at the studio. This is a deeply painful decision,” wrote co-CEO Mark Gerhard on LinkedIn. “The people leaving our team have invested enormous talent, passion and long hours into building what we believe in. Letting colleagues go is never something any leader wants to do, and I know the impact this will have on individuals, families and our wider community.”

The tone of the of the announcement takes a sharp turn, though, when in the next paragraph Gerhard takes responsibility, but also reiterates that the team has been victims of what they previous described as “espionage, sabotage, and criminal interference.”

“As leaders we take responsibility for the outcomes of our projects and the decisions that follow. At the same time, the launch period was affected by factors beyond normal operational challenges and a competitive environment.”

“Over the past months we have been working with external partners and legal advisors to investigate the criminal activity that took place around our launch,” continues Gerhard. “That work has taken far longer than expected, but it has now resulted in overwhelming evidence of organised espionage and corporate sabotage affecting MindsEye. Because this matter is moving toward prosecution, we cannot share the full details publicly yet.”

If you want to the full breakdown of what Build A Rocket Boy is alleging happened to them, read it all here. The short answer is, they claim several employees were working with journalists and a UK company called Ritual Network in a sort of smear campaign totalling a million euros. The ultimate goal seems to have been to damage both Build A Rocket Boy and its game, MindsEye.

However, it has gone past just claims as Build A Rocket Boy insists they have evidence and are actively attempting legal action against those involved. While it sounds insane, weirder things happen all the time, so we will have to see how it all plays out.

Interestingly, under the LinkedIn post announcing the layoffs, a former Build A Rocket Boy employee named Jordan Rey, who was the Lead Platform Engineer, defended the company’s claims: “I was myself targeted by a group of people that made a secret Discord server to dox and insults BARB. This went as far as SWATing my personal home in France. Even through I know BARB is not fully transparent on MindsEye launch, I know for a fact that criminal activity takes place to target BARB.”

Regardless of whether or not there actually is a conspiracy against the company, once again bringing the subject up – despite not being able to say anything about it – in a post announcing layoffs is a rather tone-deaf move.

I’ll be watching how this developes with great interest.