The Day Before remains the liveliest dead game I've ever seen. The servers are officially gone and the actual game has evaporated, but the sheer magnitude of its mismanagement is still unfurling. In a new report from Game Two, which cites another report from GameStar, former members of now-defunct developer Fntastic allege that the project saw constant do-overs, a dire lack of creative vision, terrible working conditions, and crunch that employees literally had to pay for in the form of fines, painting the already disastrous project in a somehow grimmer light.
As PC Gamer first noticed, the report collects accounts from 16 former Fntastic employees and one of the studio's controversial "volunteer" workers, as well as seven members of The Day Before publisher Mytona. It opens with some background on Fntastic's origins in other games – including some decently reviewed and fairly successful games like The Wild Eight, a frigid survival title – that routinely ended up being sabotaged by over-designed trend-chasing. Stop me if this sounds familiar.
