4 short days and then gone. The Fntastic studio, responsible for the development of the abomination The Day Before, has decided to already end the game, even though it has barely launched in early access. But also to close its doors, with immediate effect.
The information came from a lunar press release published on Twitter. We can thus read that the studio “invested all efforts, resources and hours into the development of The Day Before”and that he had
“want to release patches to reveal the full potential of the game, but no longer has the funds to continue operating”.
Released Thursday evening in early access on Steam, The Day Before quickly took off on Twitch, with more than 400,000 viewers for its first evening and 30,000 simultaneous players. Who were very quickly disillusioned by the pitiful state of the title, which was sold for €40. Far from the survival MMO with zombies as initially marketed, and closer to a extraction shooter to buggy servers and levels. And this is ultimately not very surprising, as the project had everything of a scam.
The story of a scam
Last February, and after months of haphazard communication, Fntastic finally posted a gameplay trailer online, carefully kept private since. We discovered absolute nothingness, poorly hidden by a close-up of the protagonist’s buttocks. A trailer which was nothing more than an amalgamation of other trailers for similar games, put together to try to create an illusion of bad taste. Which obviously did not reassure potential players, quite the contrary.
Ten months later, the attempted scam has indeed been proven, despite press releases from the studio trying to convince the contrary. The game, which has accumulated negative reviews and refund requests during its short life – 46% of its 201,000 sales if we are to believe Eduard Gotovtsev’s figures, CEO of Fntastic – is already canceled. And is already no longer available for sale on Steam. The studio also seems determined to try to erase all its traces. His entire YouTube channel is now private, and all channels on his Discord server closed.
It now remains to be seen whether, given the scale of the scam, Steam will intervene to reimburse buyers. Or if we will have to wait for consumer associations to bring the matter before competent courts. Case to follow, as they say.