Key insights
- Day Before developer Fntastic is back and crowdfunding a new game.
- However, few are willing to trust the studio again and accuse Fntastic of scamming customers with The Day Before.
- For this reason, Fntastic has explained why it believes The Day Before is a flop, citing “excessive marketing.”
The story behind “The Day Before” is bizarre. Advertised as an MMO, it was at times the game with the most wish lists on Steam. Then it came out and everyone hated it. It wasn't even an MMO and was more like an extraction shooter – albeit a very simple one that fell apart very quickly due to bugs and performance issues.
Now Fntastic is back and asking the gaming community for a second chance. As part of this, it gives its own take on what went wrong, blaming much of The Day Before's problems on over-promises and poorly communicated marketing.
Fntastic shares its thoughts on the disastrous launch the day before
“Everyone deserves a second chance,” Fntastic said, announcing its return and hoping to raise funds for the next game. “We deeply apologize to everyone for The Day Before and take full responsibility for what happened.”
The studio has responded to tweets, explaining in a reply what they believe the problem is with The Day Before. “Factors that led to failure included overly ambitious goals with a low indie budget, a team with no AAA experience and excessive marketing, which we deeply regret.”
However, not many seem convinced. Another response accuses the studio of trying to defraud its player base. In response, the studio writes: “How did we cheat? We have refunded all the money.” [sic]”.
Now Fntastic is asking for money again. It has set up a $15,000 Kickstarter campaign to back a completely different game called Escape Factory.
Not surprisingly, it has had little success so far. As Fntastic itself mentions on social media, The Day Before hasn't followed through on its marketing, so few are likely to trust the studio again. When The Day Before's gameplay footage was finally shown, it barely resembled the promised product. It also looked incredibly unfinished, which became clear when it finally hit the market on December 7th to overwhelmingly negative reviews.
Four days later, Fntastic said that The Day Before had “failed financially” and that the studio would be closing. The following month, servers were shut down and players were issued refunds.
However, there were signs of problems long before launch. The studio was accused of copying trailers for other games into its own promotional material and failed to even secure the trademark for its own game title. The latter edition saw the game temporarily removed from Steam before release, and the whole ordeal led many to believe that The Day Before wasn't actually a real game.
The developers later claimed that they struggled greatly to release the game and were even fined for “small mistakes” in the work (via IGN). With so much going wrong in every department, few expected Fntastic to return.
It remains to be seen whether Fntastic can get Escape Factory off the ground. But for now, it's still struggling to defend itself against The Day Before's critics, so the studio certainly has a lot to prove — especially now that it's asking for money again.
