Today Fntastic, the developer of the so-called survival MMO The Day Before, announced that it's shutting down its operations.
According to the announcement made on X (formerly Twitter), the game has failed financially, and the studio lacks funds to continue operating.
The developer goes on to say all income from the game, which launched last week and received "Overwhelmingly Negative" reviews on Steam, will be used to pay off debts to partners.
Whole Fntastic planned to release new patches and "reveal the full potential of the game" They're unable to do so due to the lack of funds.
We also hear that the future of the game is unknown, and the same goes for the studio's other live game Propnight, but the servers won't be taken down for the time being.
The developers admit that, while they did everything they could to meet the players' expectations, they miscalculated their own capabilities.
Here's the message from Fntastic in its entirety:
Today, we announce the closure of Fntastic studio. Unfortunately, The Day Before 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.
It's important to note that we didn't take any money from the public during the development of The Day Before; there were no pre-orders or crowdfunding campaigns. We worked tirelessly for five years, pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into the game.
At the moment, the future of The Day Before and Propnight is unknown, but the servers will remain operational.
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.
We're grateful to everyone who supported us during these difficult years. It's been a fantastic journey over the past eight years.
Following the release of The Day Before, many expressed their disappointment in the state of the game, highlighting radical differences between the latest trailer and the promises made by the studio and what they had purchased.
The top-ranked "Most Helpful" review on Steam paints a dire portrait of the game, mentioning that the touted open-world elements aren't included in the build put for sale, and the developer went as far as deleting videos showing off the missing features.
This is not a Open World MMO, This Is a small area extraction shooter. The devs deleted all the old videos showing the open world elements. The city is dead and there are barley any open buildings.
There are no survival elements in the game because its based on being a extraction based shooter game like tarkov. Shame the game could have been the next day z. I would not recommend buying this game. Most of the city isn't open anyways.
Update: as of 4 p.m. EST the game has been withdrawn from sale on Steam.
Originally announced in 2021, The Day Before appeared quite promising, but its development has been plagued by controversy and delays. Unfortunately, it appears that its story has now reached the conclusion that many feared.
