Within four days of launch, developer Fntastic announced that it was shutting down and that The Day Before had been taken off sale, while earlier this week, its servers shut down as well, rendering it entirely (and blessedly) unplayable, with refunds being issued to those who purchased it.

Intriguingly, in spite of that shocking failure, and the fact that it’s officially closed down, Fntastic has taken to Twitter to issue yet another bizarre statement to defend itself and the game- although it’s chosen to do so by taking the offensive.

Fntastic says that the roundly criticized and evidently broken game was the victim of “negative bias” and a “hate campaign” that it says was perpetuated by “certain bloggers making money” off of said negativity, which, as per the developer, “affected the perception of the game”.

“Look at unbiased gameplay, like Dr. Disrespect’s stream at release,” Fntastic’s statement reads. “Despite the initial bugs and server issues, he liked the game, which we fixed later, and the game received improved reviews over the weekend. Unfortunately, the hate campaign had already inflicted significant damage.”

That doesn’t exactly explain why the developer chose to take the drastic measure of shutting down entirely and taking the game off sale within four days of release. But wait, there’s more, with the developer going on to talk about petitions being created for The Day Before to be revived, and Steam keys being sold at exorbitant prices by scalpers.

The statement continued, “By the way, after sales closed, many people wrote to us that bloggers had deceived them and they liked the game, and they asked for access. We also heard that petitions were created to continue development, and on the black market, the game’s price exceeded $200, and some even began to make their own mods.”

Fntastic has also suggested that in spite of officially announcing its closure in December, the studio is still sticking around, ending its statement by saying, “We encourage you to subscribe to our social networks to know what will happen next.” Whatever that is, hopefully audiences will approach it with even greater caution.

In our review of The Day Before, we gave it a score of 1/10, making it the first game to receive that score from GamingBolt in over a dozen years. Our review said, “There’s a reason the phrase ‘buyer beware’ remains relevant, and it’s because of games like The Day Before. The only bright side to its miserable existence is you can no longer purchase it.” Read the full review through here.

https://twitter.com/FntasticHQ/status/1750076648798785989

Announced in 2021, The Day Before was touted as a survival MMO set in a post-pandemic world. It would face multiple delays and a shift to Unreal Engine 5. The lack of gameplay footage close to release prompted skepticism from fans, and when Fntastic finally showcased the game in January 2023, it was after announcing yet another delay to November due to a trademark dispute.

The Day Before would suffer another delay to December while shifting to an early access launch on PC. Following overwhelmingly negative reviews, Fntastic shut down, stating the title had “failed financially” and lacked the funds to continue development. Check out our review for the early access version here – we gave it a rare 1 out of 10 due to its terrible gameplay, design, world and more.

The publisher continues to offer refunds for Steam players, noting that the platform is “proactively” refunding. While it extended its gratitude to players, it revealed that there was no choice but to shut down the project due to the lack of a development team.

The Day Before launched on December 7th for PC via Steam Early Access. It faced multiple delays over the years, from shifting to Unreal Engine 5 to a trademark dispute (before the developer revealed that a delay was planned before it emerged). Recent gameplay reveals also met with skepticism.

At launch, it immediately earned an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating on the platform, with many pointing out the lack of VoIP, vaulting, melee attacks and more. Also, despite being marketed as an open-world survival MMO, it’s an extraction shooter (and not even a passable one). Check out our review for more details.

https://twitter.com/playdaybefore/status/1738112110385914052

Considering the scarcity of a game that can no longer be officially purchased, keys for the game are quite pricey at these resellers, with some listings going for more than $300. These keys should theoretically work fine in allowing buyers to redeem the game on Steam. However, considering the game’s current status, exactly how long anyone will be able to play it before its servers are shut down is currently unknown.

Sales of The Day Before were pulled from Steam earlier this month following a fair bit of controversy surrounding its release. Originally pitched as an open-world survival MMORPG, the game instead turned out to be an extraction shooter with mindless zombies as its primary enemies. The game had seen quite a bit of negative reviews on launch, and at the time of writing, its reviews are currently rated on Steam as Overwhelmingly Negative, with 23,771 user reviews on its store page.

For more details on what went wrong with The Day Before, go here. You can also read our review here.

I have. It’s called The Day Before, and it’s not a steaming hot mess but a cold, dilapidated boat left on the coast to rot and awaiting the day it can be dragged underwater by the encroaching waves. There’s been plenty of controversy over the game, especially with developer Fntastic announcing its closure after merely four days of launch, to say nothing of the delays, awful gameplay reveals, statements on not wanting to be called scammers etc.

"Up to release and right now on the Steam Early Access page, Fntastic lies about the game."

It’s even more insane because The Day Before was supposed to be an early access title with six to eight months of support. Instead, it’s a disaster, a reminder of the dangers of hype and, for all intents and purposes, a scam.

What is The Day Before? Let’s start with what it’s not – an open-world survival MMO. You don’t spawn on this massive map and scrounge resources to set up a base, cook meals, weather storms, unlock more recipes, and maybe do something crazy. Fight bosses, earn powerful weapons, tame creatures to use as mounts, delve into the world and unravel its mysteries – really anything done better in several other games. None of that defines The Day Before, which is an extraction shooter, but we’ll get to how it fails in those respects as well. Up to release and right now on the Steam Early Access page, Fntastic lies about the game.

When starting, you must create a character with various “types” having barely different traits that don’t impact how you play the game. That sounds neat until you see mid-tier hairstyles, faces and other options available. I can understand not having shorter or taller characters because of hitboxes, but the customization still feels barebones. It’s also worth noting that clicking “Random” in the face category seemingly reset my chosen type. A bug, possibly, but the worst was yet to come.

The game starts with people rescuing someone from what seems to be an accident. That someone is you, and upon waking, you meet Lenard, a doctor. After getting acquainted with the various vendors of Woodberry in this post-apocalyptic world, it’s off to New Fortune City to fulfil their requests and scavenge essential supplies like car batteries, guitar lessons and medicines. Like the settlement’s name, every NPC is absolutely wooden in their delivery, with forgettable dialogue and two-dimensional personalities.

"The requests are randomly generated and constantly cycle between the same boring items to collect."

Despite having some semblance of an intro, that’s pretty much all there is to The Day Before’s plot and characters. You could hear rumors about the Azure Initiative and how it set up a bunker under a farm or how its satellites are still running (prompting a visit to their building where quite a few infected await).

However, none of it has any bearing on anything. You hear about a prison taken over by inmates who would become pirates (not the sea-faring kind), and it sounds somewhat interesting. Until it’s revealed that they left in search of something better, leaving another abandoned building on top of the rest.

The requests are mind-numbing and always revolve around finding an item or three. One task involved collecting car batteries, naturally located in ATMs and file cabinets in the bank. Another task for collecting medicines? Probably one of those was actually inside the two pharmacies visited. The requests are randomly generated and constantly cycle between the same boring items to collect. If there’s nothing but fetch quests, couldn’t the game at least mix things up? Of course, the reason for that becomes abundantly clear after spending more than a few minutes in New Fortune City.

You receive Woodberry Coins and reputation points for completing requests, which feel unsatisfactory for the time they take to complete (and this is after buffs). Some of the best weapons, armor, backpacks and attachments are tied to reputation, so even if you amass a small fortune by selling everything extracted, you’re gated by the piddly amounts of reputation points each request gives. Those are ideal situations though – if you die, you get nothing.

"Even if you embrace the extraction shooter design, The Day Before doesn’t do that well either. There is a complete lack of interesting things to do in the city."

Everything carried is lost, and you’re given a measly 500 Woodcoins to buy a handgun and some ammo (enough to kill three zombies, maybe). Better hope you get lucky and find better weapons/more ammo on the next raid, but also keep some space for fulfilling that request. Not that it matters because when turning in quest items, the game can’t remove them from your backpack if it’s full and give you Woodcoins (which take up space).

You have to make room, and if you have the lowest-level backpack like I did after getting ganked, then tough luck. I had to sell my handgun, ammo, beanie, and food to buy a backpack for more space and then complete the task to get my rewards.

Even if you embrace the extraction shooter design, The Day Before doesn’t do that well either. There is a complete lack of interesting things to do in the city. No random events, tasks or bounties. Every store seemingly has the same alarm system where you need to guess the keycode, and it’s always a crapshoot. At least they give you two or three tries – fail, and the beeping gets louder, attracting the infected. Or not, which is another issue on top of the other dozen to get into.

Most of the buildings are closed off. Those that are open have little to no interactivity outside of materials to loot for requests, weapons, ammo, clothes (which aren’t unlocked as cosmetic options but exist as separate items), and heaps of junk. It makes New Fortune City feel less like a lived-in environment that’s been abandoned and more like terrible set dressing.

"Weapons also can’t be modified without a workbench – obviously inspired by The Last of Us but at odds with the extraction shooter genre."

Compare this to something like Massive Entertainment’s The Division. You could remove all the phone recordings, ECHOS, Survival Guides, Crashed Drones and whatnot, and each area still feels distinct. Parks are mass grave sites, burned-out buildings (some with CDC tarps covering them) – even areas that try to imbue some manner of environmental story-telling instead of being “Generic Post-apocalyptic Building #15.” I don’t expect New Fortune City to be in ruins, but seeing so many skyscrapers in pristine conditions doesn’t help what little immersion remains.

The infected are completely random in how often they appear. You may stumble across a few and have some more join as you run and backpedal constantly (the lack of any evasive maneuvers or melee combat makes things extremely uncomfortable). They’re also tanky, sometimes taking two to three headshots from a rifle to kill.

However, most other times, you wander the streets, spot one or two, gun them down and move on. I often saw an infected fall out of a car, which added some tension. Then it happened a dozen more times and got boring, except for that one occasion where an infected glitched and stood, unmoving, in the middle of the vehicle.

Opening some containers is frustrating – you must perfectly position your character to get the prompt. It leads to awkward shuffling until the exact correct position is achieved. You can’t equip clothing or use items when in the looting menu. You must loot them first, and then open your inventory to use them. Weapons also can’t be modified without a workbench – obviously inspired by The Last of Us but at odds with the extraction shooter genre.

"There’s also no mantling, vaulting, toggle shift to run, or climbing ladders, which makes the exploration even more tedious and annoying."

There are only three viable extraction points concentrated in the Northern part of the city, making it easy to get ganked by stronger players (as happened with me at one point). You could always extract without a backpack in other places, which sounds so asinine for a game whose entire loop revolves around looting and nothing else. Why not just make these regular extraction points? It’s not encouraging PvP so much as allowing for easy ganks.

When using the map, you stop in one place and can’t navigate it with the mouse – WASD or the scroll wheel, for some reason, must be used. No zooming out and placing waypoint markers. You can’t even track more than one request at a time, and it doesn’t even tell you the remaining items required when pinned on the top left. No compass either, so have fun constantly opening the map to see where you’re going because every street looks and feels the same.

There’s also no mantling, vaulting, toggle shift to run, or climbing ladders, which makes the exploration even more tedious and annoying. Get used to those messages from vendors telling you to complete the same dumb requests as before. How many checkups do I need, Lenard? What are you really doing with all the insulin and inhalers, Lenard?

Performance in The Day Before is just plain odd. Sometimes, it runs decently – not amazing at High settings, but well enough. Then, on certain occasions, the frame rate will dip despite nothing happening, which I can only attribute to poor optimization (it also occurs when returning from raids). I could slightly forgive this if the graphics were decent, but they’re bland and uninspired.

"You get a plot of land early on to build some housing, starting with a shabby tent. Do the infected not attack this far out of the city? Either way, it serves no purpose."

The same goes for the glitches. On my first raid, after getting a free weapon from Woodberry, I was in the middle of a request, and when getting ready to shoot some infected, my game crashed due to a “Fatal Error.” Upon loading back in, I was in the same spot with the same zombies attacking, except everything was gone. No backpack or weapons – not even the items I looted for the request. What a great way to start off the game. There’s also no hope for fixes because, as mentioned already, Fntastic is seemingly no more.

I could go on with The Day Before’s multitude of issues. There is a gym for exercising and raising your max stamina. The minimal increase didn’t feel worth the 50 Woodberry Coins or the waiting period for the awkward animation to finish. You can also purchase vehicles for hefty amounts of coins, which is unnecessary since New Fortune City feels surprisingly small. Trying to farm that amount also feels like a senseless grind, even if you want to get to the extraction point faster.

You get a plot of land early on to build some housing, starting with a shabby tent. Do the infected not attack this far out of the city? Either way, it serves no purpose. You can decorate it, for whatever reason, except pretty much everything costs exorbitant amounts. Maybe it’s a holdover from when the game was still a survival MMO if it ever was.

Speaking of survival mechanics, you have the rudimentary eating food and drinking water. You can also use medkits to heal injuries. Injuries are so random at times – a single hit from an infected enemy at full health can cause bleeding, break an arm or do nothing because consistency is overrated.

"I struggled and found a single redeeming thing about The Day Before – you can no longer buy it. You can’t waste your money or receive it as a gift."

The Day Before isn’t what it was hyped to be, but expectations were in check after so many delays and controversies. That doesn’t change the fact that it has an awkward and barebones UI, nonexistent progression, dodgy optimization, an uninteresting setting with cobbled-together environments, lackadaisical gunplay and lackluster movement. All of this bolted onto a gameplay loop that even free games like HoloCure put to shame.

I struggled and found a single redeeming thing about The Day Before – you can no longer buy it. You can’t waste your money or receive it as a gift. It means you can try dozens – heck, hundreds of other games this year that are far more deserving and finally move on from ever having to hear about this disaster again.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Aaaannndd it’s about five days later, The Day Before has an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating on Steam, Fntastic announced its shutting down, and the game’s future is unknown. You would think 2023 would close out without a major controversy, and lo and behold, you would be wrong. If ever there was a time to ask, “What the hell happened?”, it would be now.

According to Fntastic’s statement, The Day Before has “failed financially”, and it lacks the funds to continue development. The income received thus far will be used to “pay off debts” to its partners. “We invested all our efforts, resources, and man-hours into the development of The Day Before, which was our first huge game. We really wanted to release new patches to reveal the full potential of the game, but unfortunately, we don’t have the funding to continue the work.”

It also noted that no money was taken from the public during development – no pre-orders or crowdfunding campaigns, and it worked “tirelessly for five years, pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into the game.” The studio also apologized for not meeting expectations, claiming it did “everything within our power, but unfortunately, we miscalculated our capabilities” while affirming that game development is “an incredibly challenging endeavor.” Servers for The Day Before and its previous game, Propnight, remain available.

How much did the game sell in early access? Was Fntastic’s funding completely tapped by launch time, and how much did it expect to sell to keep going? If success hinged on a few days’ sales, why did the studio commit to a six to eight-month early access period with the promise of additional content, like new items, weapons, equipment, cars and houses? You don’t just suddenly wake up and realize all the money for development is gone and then hit the panic button.

Will there be refunds for those who took the plunge? While Fntastic notes all “income” is going towards paying off its debts to partners, publisher MyTona confirmed that it’s working with Steam to offer refunds to those who opt for the same. Nevertheless, it does nothing to resolve claims that the developer “took the money and ran.”

Whatever the case, it became more apparent over the past year that The Day Before had an uphill battle to win approval. After the initial screenshots and trailer in 2021, many advised caution over the game’s fidelity and how it may not end up as impressive. Hilariously, Fntastic claimed that the graphics would look “even better” in the final product, which did little to assuage concerns. At the time, it was dubbed an open-world survival MMO. Keep that in mind for later.

Extensive gameplay was released a few months later, with The Day Before slated for Q2 2021. Of course, that launch never happened. In October, the developer announced a delay to June 2022. When the month arrived, another delay was announced to March 2023, along with the decision to switch to Unreal Engine 5. Alarm bells were already going off in a post-No Man’s Sky, post-Anthem, and post-Redfall gaming world, and many waited to see how things panned out.

Of course, by the time 2023 started, we were about two months off from the supposed launch, and no new gameplay was revealed. Fntastic announced that new “raw” gameplay footage would arrive sometime in January, and then a week later, announced another delay to November 10th due to a trademark dispute. The delay was planned before the dispute arose, but many asked the same question: Why did the studio wait to announce it till now?

Finally, the gameplay debuted, and to say it was a step down from the 2021 footage would be an understatement. There was running. There was scavenging. There wasn’t much compelling content, but it was a real game, guys, we swear. Interestingly – or unsurprisingly – the previous trailers and footage had been privated on YouTube. Almost like Fntastic was trying to cover its tracks. It was likely due to the trademark dispute, and at that point, many were waiting for The Day Before to launch to see the scale of the disaster.

The idea of a beta was floated around April by an admin on The Day Before’s discord (which never manifested), and a trademark for Dayworld popped up in September. However, in the same month, Fntastic announced a final delay to December 7th, with the trademark dispute supposedly resolved. Furthermore, it shifted from a full launch to an early access release and retailed for $39.99.

Another new gameplay trailer was released, and once again, many felt it was nowhere near the level of the original 2021 footage. On its early access page, The Day Before sounded like an extraction shooter, but it was still touted as an open-world survival MMO.

Days before launch, Fntastic published a statement almost blatantly foreshadowing events. It thanked players, volunteers and supporters, including a “partner who believed in us despite all the difficulties” (who hopefully didn’t invest too much into the project). However, it also addressed those “who didn’t believe in us”, and asked forgiveness for “not doing the best marketing and teasers.”

It also asked not to be accused of scamming since it “didn’t take a penny from anyone” or for making an “asset flip.” “We are like you; we work hard. And we’re incredibly happy that our game will finally see the light of day for everyone to explore.”

Of course, The Day Before launched in early access, and many discovered that it wasn’t an open-world survival MMO but an extraction shooter. Performance issues, no melee, lackluster survival elements, barely any open buildings to explore in the city, no vaulting, barely any zombies, horrendous servers – the list goes on. Of the 19,819 user reviews on Steam, only 17 percent are positive. And now, we’re here.

Perhaps the strangest twist is that the trademark dispute was legit. TheDayBefore is a calendar app by a company called The Day Before Inc. that began distribution in 2010 and has over 40 million downloads as of February 2023. How Fntastic and publisher MyTona resolved the dispute is unknown.

How this messed up saga played out is a mystery, and we may never get all the answers. There are reports and threads about how the game’s trademark wasn’t filed until January 2022 with links to all of the Unreal Engine asset packs supposedly used in development, but take all of it with a grain of salt. You could check out the latest tweet from DayZ, which essentially parodies Fntastic’s closure statement and ends with “10 years and still undefeated.”

Some have pointed out that The Wild Eight, Fntastic’s first game, now lists Eight Points as the developer. Surely, this isn’t the same studio, right? Time will tell.

For now, The Day Before is yet another cautionary tale for players. If something is too good to be true, it usually is, and if a game is delayed multiple times with numerous downgrades and dodgy communication, you may want to look forward to something else.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Naturally, the absolute disaster of the game’s launch (coupled with its less-than-ideal pre-release marketing cycle) has left many who invested time and money into it a little displeased. However, it has been confirmed by both Fntastic and The Day Before’s publisher, MyTona, that the latter is working with Steam to issue refunds to anyone who wants one, regardless of how much time they put into the game.

“We are sorry for the fact that the game didn’t meet the expectations of the majority of the players,” MyTona wrote on Twitter. “Today we will work with Steam to open up refunds for any players who choose to make a refund.”

Fntastic wrote: “Answer to those who ask for a refund. MyTona and we’re currently working with Steam to allow refunds for any player who chooses to request one, regardless of game time. Fntastic received $0 and will receive nothing from The Day Before sales.”

It’s worth mentioning, too, that there won’t be any further The Day Before sales, since the game was made unavailable to purchase on Steam shortly after Fntastic announced that it was shutting down.

https://twitter.com/mytona_official/status/1734359076690362582

#thedaybefore #fntastic #mytona
Answer to those who ask for a refund. Mytona and we're currently working with Steam to allow refunds for any player who chooses to request one, regardless of game time. Fntastic received $0 and will receive nothing from The Day Before sales.

— Fntastic (@FntasticHQ) December 12, 2023

On Twitter, it stated that the title has “failed financially, and we lack the funds to continue. All income received is being used to pay off debts to our partners.”

“We invested all our efforts, resources, and man-hours into the development of The Day Before, which was our first huge game. We really wanted to release new patches to reveal the full potential of the game, but unfortunately, we don’t have the funding to continue the work.” The developer notes that no money was taken from “the public” during the game’s development with the lack of pre-orders or “crowdfunding campaigns.”

“We worked tirelessly for five years, pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into the game.” The future of The Day Before and Propnight is up in the air, but servers will remain available for both. “We apologize if we didn’t meet your expectations. We did everything within our power, but unfortunately, we miscalculated our capabilities. Creating games is an incredibly challenging endeavor.”

Fntastic didn’t mention anything about revenue earned from early access sales or how many units were sold to trigger such a decision. As such, given the numerous delays, trademark dispute, shift to early access, and user reviews (currently “Overwhelmingly Negative” on Steam) calling out its various issues, many are claiming the entire endeavor to be one big scam. Time will tell if we ever learn the truth about what happened.

Regardless, The Day Before is still available for PC via Steam Early Access. According to SteamDB, it peaked at 6,416 concurrent players in the past 24 hours, a massive drop from the all-time peak of 38,104 at launch.

Official statement. #fntastic #thedaybefore #propnight pic.twitter.com/AKcRHeIaIW

— Fntastic (@FntasticHQ) December 11, 2023

The negative reviews list quite a few reasons for the response, with several player reviews lambasting a game for mis-representing its genre. Rather than being an open world survival game, The Day Before instead seems to be an extraction shooter that takes place in a relatively small map.

Players have also criticised technical aspects of the game, including laggy online play causing combat to be unsatisfying when fighting against other players, and various bugs throughout the game. One player states that you can fall through the game’s floor and get soft-locked while playing.

As a result of the negative response, developer FNTASTIC has shut down discussions in most of the channels in The Day Before‘s Discord server. The studio released a statement explaining that it needs to curb the overwhelming toxicity coming about after the game’s release.

“We’ve made the decision to temporarily lock the channel for several reasons,” says the statement. “Firstly, it’s essential to let things calm down due to the overwhelming toxicity that we currently cannot manage effectively. Secondly, we need to channel all bug reports to the development team, and we can’t accomplish this if we aren’t allowed to share those reports.”

“Continuous moderation here is diverting our time away from addressing major bugs and making crucial fixes. A patch is in the works, so please be prepared for an upcoming game update.”

Earlier this week, FNTASTIC issued quite a strange statement about the game’s release, complete with a segment dedicated to those who “didn’t believe in us,” where the studio states that it doesn’t “hold a grudge” against critics. Curiously, the statement also asked players to stop accusing the studio of “scamming” players or having developed an “asset flip”.

Now, on the eve of The Day Before’s long overdue release (albeit, unexpectedly, in early access rather than as a full game), Fntastic has issued a statement on its official Twitter account.

Though much of the statement consists of messages for the game’s future players, streamers, supporters, behind-the-scenes partners, the developer has dedicated one particularly strange section to those who “didn’t believe in us”, where, in addition to apologizing for “not doing the best marketing and teasers”, Fntastic says it doesn’t “hold a grudge” against critics, and asks people not to accuse it of “scamming” or having developed an “asset flip”.

The developer wrote: “To a person who didn’t believe in us: we made this game for you, too. We accept any kind of criticism and don’t hold a grudge against you. Before we continue moving forward together, kindly allow us to note a few things:

“Please forgive us for not doing the best marketing and teasers. We learn something new and improve ourselves every single day.

“Please don’t accuse us of scamming; that’s not true. We didn’t take a penny from anyone.

“Please don’t accuse us of asset flip; that’s not true also. Our team worked day and night for five years to make our dream game a reality.

“Please don’t underestimate our work; it wasn’t easy. We are like you; we work hard. And we’re incredibly happy that our game will finally see the light of day for everyone to explore.”

Since its announcement, The Day Before has come under fire for a variety of reasons, from Fntastic not showing gameplay for long stretches, the gameplay looking underwhelming when it was finally shown earlier this year, a lack of communication from the developer regarding the state of the project, a string of delays, accusations of unpaid volunteers contributing to important parts of development, and more.

The Day Before is set to launch in early access for PC via Steam on December 7.

https://twitter.com/FntasticHQ/status/1731680871856369689