MindsEye continues to project confidence: ex-GTA 5 lead's new game is available physically, but the devs ask folks to delay streams until official launch time – meanwhile a 7-hour "100% walkthrough" is already on YouTube

Today is the day – MindsEye, the latest game from GTA 5 veteran Leslie Benzies, is here, but following a series of bizarre circumstances leading up to its launch, including the devs now asking streamers to hold off from streaming the game for a few more hours, the vibes are a bit weird, to say the least.

Last month, some MindsEye previews from content creators surfaced online, and not everyone was full of praise for it, with complaints about bugs, a lack of depth in the game's combat system, and more. This prompted one exec at the studio to proclaim that "there is a concerted effort by some people that don't want to see Leslie [Benzies] or Build A Rocket Boy to be successful that are making a concerted effort to trash the game and the studio." A bit of a bold claim, to put it lightly.

The situation then became more concerning still last week, when two different studio execs confirmed that they'd left Build a Rocket Boy, just a week before MindsEye was set to launch. This… didn't sound promising at all. Combined with a statement from the devs telling those who'd managed to get hold of physical copies ahead of launch that they'd really rather them wait "until the official release date" to play, highlighting "a major update" coming at launch to bring "key improvements to ensure MindsEye plays as we intended," things were sounding a little shaky, to say the least.

That same day-one update "we highly recommend installing," it should be noted, is already delayed on Xbox Series X|S, as the devs confirmed in a post on Reddit yesterday that "due to varied platform certification, Update 2 will be made available on Xbox as soon as possible." And now, it's been pointed out on ResetEra that the official MindsEye Twitch channel has been hopping into streams of the game today, politely asking streamers if they'd mind stopping what they're doing and coming back later.

"Hey! This is the MindsEye team," one such message reads. "The game officially is available later (6pm UK time) and Twitch is pausing early streams until then. If you can save this for later, it would be great. Thanks for your support."

This particular message was sent to Twitch content creator mrrespecto_, who promptly responded on stream to say that "I'm in Australia, so the official release day is today. So they can't stop my stream."

It's worth noting that on the official MindsEye release schedule map, the release date for Australia is actually June 11, with it set to launch in Sydney, for example, at 3am local time. It's at this time that the game is set to unlock on Steam and on digital platforms, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's when the day-one patch will be available, too (unless you're on Xbox, that is).

However, it's still a bizarre situation, given that it's release day in most countries right now, and has been for hours, with physical copies in stores and ready to buy. In the UK, for example, anyone could walk into a game store to buy it right now, but it would seem they'd still be asked not to stream it online for a couple more hours. None of this screams confidence.

We reached out to publisher IO Interactive to ask why this decision has been made, but we haven't received a response.

For what it's worth, any effort to keep streamers and content creators at bay doesn't seem to have been very effective, either. At the time of writing on Twitch, there are 15 ongoing live streams of the game, while on YouTube, one channel by the name of wolker4 has uploaded what's apparently a "100% walkthrough" of the full game, which you can watch in a single seven-hour sitting. I can't imagine the team at Build a Rocket Boy is too pleased about that.

GTA 5 dev says his new open-world game is 20 hours of no-filler content at a now-quaint $60 because players "worried about the price of eggs" want "value for money."