Take-Two CEO Hints at 2025’s Most Criticized Game

Leslie Benzies, a long-time producer of Grand Theft Auto, had a contentious breakup with Rockstar Games in 2016, leading to a legal battle filled with accusations that concluded with a confidential settlement in 2019. Last year, his new studio released a third-person shooter with open-world driving called MindsEye, which ended up being the lowest-rated game of 2025. Recently, the CEO of Take-Two, Rockstar’s parent company, seemed to take a veiled jab at this unsuccessful venture.

“Creating hits is becoming increasingly challenging as entertainment industries evolve,” Strauss Zelnick remarked at the TD Cowen 54th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. “The team at Rockstar consistently produces massive hits, while many others, including former Rockstar employees, have tried and failed.”

It’s likely that the reference to “former Rockstar employees” points to Benzies’ team at Build a Rocket Boy. While MindsEye was never expected to rival GTA, Benzies had made bold claims about the game, which was intended to be a high-fidelity competitor to Roblox.

“We plan to introduce multiplayer and develop a full open world,” he stated about MindsEye in an interview just before its launch. “We also need to consider what players are creating and integrate that into our plans. With the user-friendly tools, we anticipate a significant number of players will engage and experiment, hopefully generating compelling content that we can promote.”

Additionally, the studio has been vocal about alleged external forces trying to sabotage the game. Following its release, Benzies reportedly attributed MindsEye’s poor reception to both internal and external disruptors. Before the launch, co-CEO Mark Gerhard suggested that negative online commentary about the game might have been financially motivated, hinting at Rockstar. He has since promised a revival of MindsEye 2.0.

Zelnick, in his recent comments, emphasized that just because no one has yet created a GTA-level hit doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future, potentially from a team outside of Rockstar. “That doesn’t mean it can’t happen down the line,” he noted. “We’re always on our toes. But it won’t be technology that drives the change; it will be an exceptionally creative individual or team that comes along and does something remarkable. Our aim is to attract those talents to the Take-Two family. If we don’t succeed in that, we’ve failed.”