The most anticipated game of 2023 on Steam, now turns out to be nothing more than a scam. Fntastic, the studio behind the game, has just announced they will cease operations, less than a week after being accused of defrauding players with a false promotion.
Fntastic’s official closure announcement
“Today, we announced the closure of the Fntastic studio,” the studio announced on Twitter on December 11. “Unfortunately, The Day Before has failed in terms of revenue and we lack money to continue operating. All income will be used to repay the company’s partners.”
Fntastic also shared that they have worked “tirelessly for the past 5 years” to perfect The Day Before without collecting money from players through Early Access, pre-order or crowdfunding. Although it is “unclear what the future” will be for the game and other studio products, the servers will remain operational for the time being.
“We apologize if we did not meet your expectations,” the statement continued. “We did everything in our power, but unfortunately we misjudged our own abilities. Making games is an incredibly challenging endeavor.”
Along with cutting losses, Fntastic also appears to be denying accountability for the current turmoil surrounding The Day Before. Having been one of the most anticipated games on Steam earlier this year, the title attracted over 400,000 viewers on Twitch and 30,000 concurrent players on PC on its first day of release.
The impressive image in the trailer of The Day Before once attracted countless gamers
However, players quickly discovered that The Day Before was not the game they thought they would play through the epic trailers, but a game full of bugs, empty, and incomplete. The $40 release has received thousands of negative reviews on Steam, including “scams”, broken servers, full of bugs… and requests for refunds.
After months of debate about whether the game actually exists or not, the community has finally come to a consensus on a “mostly negative” rating for The Day Before given its disastrous launch. Previously, the game was accused of exploiting voluntary labor, misleading fans with plagiarized trailers, as well as legal disputes that caused the game to be temporarily withdrawn from Steam during many delays. At that time, players thought that the game actually did not exist, but if so, things might have been better.
It turned out that The Day Before was just an incomplete game full of errors and poor content
Fntastic dismissed doubts about its integrity and motives last week, criticizing those “don’t believe in us”. The studio even sent a letter to fans:
“To our future players who will be playing this game on December 7: We are doing this for you, so you can enjoy the game and it will become a celebration. Together, we will continue to improve the game and add more content.”
Just four days after launch, anyone who believed in Fntastic will now be extremely disappointed by their “unmasking”. It is important to know that more than 200,000 copies of The Day Before game have been sold and only less than half of them have requested a refund. That is, Fntastic’s “Hua” developers still earned about 4 million USD, excluding taxes and fees.
