Just when you thought the sad, pathetic tale of The Day Before came to an end, developer Fntastic decided to write another chapter. The studio responsible for the game took to Twitter (tweet since removed) to rant against bloggers and content creators, blaming them for the failure of the game. That is, Fntastic is blaming everyone but themselves, the actual studio that made the game, for everything that went wrong with The Day Before.
Fntastic, which supposedly shutdown mere days after The Day Before released, posted their lengthy rant on Twitter before getting community noted. They then deleted that initial tweet and posted it again, only to get community noted again. They then apparently decided to post their rant to their website, where it cannot be community noted by the Twitter community. It can, however, be community noted by the press and those "bloggers" and "content creators" they are so eager to point fingers at.
The disgraced studio opens by saying that they "worked hard and honestly" for five years. These claims of "working hard and honestly" are quite dubious when the community showed that the game was largely an asset flip of content purchased from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. The game was also long promoted as an open-world survival game, but released as a barebones extraction shooter. The Day Before's Steam description still begins with the following line, describing it as an open-world survival game.
The Day Before offers players a uniquely reimagined journey into post-apocalyptic open-world MMO survival set in the present day on the US East Coast following a deadly pandemic.
In the statement issued today, Fntastic continues to say that claims that the studio "deceived players" were untrue and that they "didn't take a penny" from anyone. They then attempt to say that the people who really profited off of The Day Before were bloggers and content creators that "made huge money by creating false content(...) to gain views and followers".
In case they again get cold feed and delete the message from their website, we have included a copy of Fntastic's full statement below.
In their statement, Fntastic claim that they "implemented everything shown in the trailers". They then immediately contradict themselves by admitting they did not include some "minor features" like parkour. Again, the statement that they "implemented everything shown in the trailers" was proven false by the community at the game's release. This is also ignoring how they announced and promoted the game as an open-world survival game.
They then went on to say that it was a "negative bias instilled by certain bloggers making money on hate affected perceptions of the game". This "negative bias" supposedly led to a "hate campaign" that "inflicted significant damage". They also mention the "unbiased gameplay" from Dr. Disrespect, saying that he "liked the game" in spite of "initial bugs and server issues".
Fntastic then goes on to claim that once the game was pulled from stores they received messages from players saying, "bloggers had deceived them and they liked the game, and they asked for access". They also claim that they "heard that petitions were created to continue development" and that "on the black market, the game's price exceeded $200".
With Fntastic's track record, we have no reason to believe that any of these claims are actually true.
Fntastic concludes their finger pointing nonsense by encouraging fans to subscribe to their social networks "to know what will happen next". Keep in mind that, again, Fntastic announced that they were closing their studio just four days after the release of The Day Before. As if that wasn't already confusing, there were prior evidence that Fntastic tried to secretly change their name to Eight Points, suggesting they were not shutting down but rather trying to hide who they were for future projects. There is also a report (in Polish) that Fntastic's CEO (former CEO?) is already working on a new game.
This company truly is the grift that keeps on grifting.
