What you need to know
- The Day Before is an open-world survival title created by Fntastic, which was released on December 7th.
- Reviewers universally panned the game for being poorly made.
- Today, on December 11th, 2023, Fntastic announced they were shutting their studio down.
The Day Before is an open-world survival "game" created by Fntastic, which launched on December 7th on Windows PC via Steam after a tumultuous year of coverage by gamers and journalists alike. In some ways, it closely resembles The Division regarding aesthetics and location. A dystopian world full of unorganized chaos meshed with the threat of death at every corner — or at least, that's what was promised.
Panned for being a scam, complete of flipped assets and pervasive bugs short after its release, The Day Before was subsequently raked over the coals by its short-lived community.
The studio behind the game is now shutting down in a total twist of events. In an official statement on Twitter, Fntastic had this to say:
Official statement. #fntastic #thedaybefore #propnight pic.twitter.com/AKcRHeIaIWDecember 11, 2023
If you're counting, that's only a measly four days after release. Going to the Steam page, we find the game with over 18,000 reviews and a 20% approval rating. That means tons of folks purchased the game, so where did all that money go exactly? Maybe their publisher pulled the rug from underneath them, or it's possible something else happened. Rumors floated everywhere before release that Fntastic wasn't even paying their employees.
According to some unverified rumors posted this morning on Reddit, The Day Before had over 200,000 initial sales, with 90,000 of them being refunded. That's nearly 50% of all sales being returned. Still, with over 100,000 rumored sales still in place, it's hard to imagine this being a total financial failure, at least presently. It remains to be seen if Fntastic's "closure" will preclude it from having to honor Steam refunds since this looks like some classic rug pull-style scam.
Despite all the rumors and conjecture, Fntastic implored users that they were building a real game. It turns out it was, in fact, just a scam. It's time to refund.
