«Shit happens».
The Day Before content had over 400,000 viewers on Twitch on the day of launch. From there, things quickly went downhill for the game and developer Fntastic.
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“The Day Before” was one of the year’s most wanted games on Steam, but when the first version of the game was launched in so-called Early Access on December 7, the reception was particularly lukewarm.
Thousands of negative reviews sprung up on the service, with most being very disappointed with the game’s content, which was marketed as a zombie-themed online survival game and with many drawing parallels to the well-known The Last of Us.
Many reacted that the game was quite empty of content and also full of bugs, in addition to the fact that it simply did not live up to the genre that was originally shown in the game’s trailers.
Many liked the idea of a massive online game set in a zombie apocalypse.
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Shut down after four days
Many also accused the company behind the game, Russian Fntastic, of fraud – and according to what should be Telegram messages from Fntastic CEO Eduard Gotovtsev had almost half of all the roughly 200,000 who had bought the game choose to ask for a refund during the weekend.
Already on Monday, Fntastic chose to request a tender. In an X-message they wrote that The Day Before had failed financially and that they did not have the means to continue operations.
“We put all our efforts, resources and man-hours into the development of The Day Before, which was our first major game. We really wanted to continue releasing updates to showcase the full potential of the game, but unfortunately we don’t have the funding to be able to continue the work,” the message said.
“We did everything in our power, but unfortunately we miscalculated our capabilities. Making games is an incredibly demanding endeavour,” wrote the developer.
Fntastic emphasized that they had not accepted any money from players during the development period, either in the form of Kickstarter campaigns or pre-orders.
Promised refund
Soon after, the option to buy the game was also removed from Steam, where it cost 40 dollars (about NOK 440) and publisher Mytona has promised that everyone who wants it will get a refund, regardless of how long you have been playing. Steam basically has a limit of two hours of gameplay to be able to request a refund.
At the time of writing, the game has around 21,500 reviews on Steam, and 85 percent of them are negative. It gives a Steam score of “Overwhelmingly Negative”.
Fntastic has also removed both their Youtube and Discord accounts, as well as their own websites. However, the company has kept its X account, and many were provoked by the company’s “Shit happens” message on Tuesday, which was interpreted as a disclaimer.
Fntastic has not commented on the matter beyond its own X messages, however Reddit users have taken notice that the company appears to have already rebranded itself as “8 Points” on Kickstarter and Steam.
However, the servers for The Day Before should still be active.
2023-12-13 15:15:00
#Longawaited #big #game #slaughtered #developer #shut #days #Tek.no
