Irina "Zemlia" Sukhanova The saga of the scandal surrounding The Day Before has reached its tragic conclusion. This project was the most anticipated on Steam. The game's advertising was even displayed in Times Square, and the hype around it reached its peak. But what was the reason for such anticipation? The Yakutian enthusiast studio Fntastic had only released two successful small projects before this moment, The Wild Eight and Propnight, and had never dealt with AAA games.
The reason lies in The Day Before's 2021 trailer.
The audience was shown an incredibly beautiful game that resembled a mix of The Division and The Last of Us. It was supposed to be a hardcore MMO shooter with survival elements. However, problems arose during the development stage. Fntastic prided itself on having volunteers who worked for free for a great idea. This backfired on them.
Judging by what the players saw, moving the project from Unreal Engine 4 to UE 5 was a mistake. The number of bugs even outraged the most devoted community. The world turned out to be empty, the textures outdated, and the animations worse than in free shooters for mobile devices.
Image credit: youtube.com/@TerakJK
The Day Before quickly became one of the worst games on Steam. It sold over 201,000 copies, and 50% of that amount was refunded. 19,000 negative reviews on Steam were the final blow for the long-awaited project.
On December 11, 2023, Fntastic announced on their Twitter that they were closing due to financial collapse. The developers don't have the funds to release new patches, and all their resources will go to paying off debts.
Here's what the developers wrote in "X":
Image credit: x.com
Main image by Stable Diffusion
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