The Day Before
The Day Before is a post-apocalyptic survival video game developed by Fntastic and released in early access on Steam for Microsoft Windows on December 7, 2023.[1][2] Marketed as an open-world multiplayer online experience set amid a zombie outbreak on the U.S. East Coast, it featured extraction-based gameplay in instanced lobbies rather than persistent multiplayer worlds.[3] The title garnered significant pre-release hype, peaking as one of Steam's most-wishlisted games, but launched to immediate backlash for technical deficiencies, absent promised features like large-scale multiplayer, and promotional materials that did not reflect the final product.[4][5] Fntastic ceased operations just four days after launch on December 11, 2023, citing inability to continue development, while denying accusations of deception and attributing criticism to a "hate campaign."[6][7] The game's servers were permanently shut down on January 22, 2024, with publisher Mytona facilitating full refunds to all buyers regardless of playtime, underscoring the project's rapid commercial and operational failure.[8][9] This outcome highlighted risks in game development transparency, as discrepancies between trailers—often using pre-rendered or sourced assets—and delivered gameplay eroded player trust and prompted widespread refunds.[10][11]Development
Announcement and Concept
Fntastic announced The Day Before on January 29, 2021, presenting it as a multiplayer open-world survival game set in a zombie-infested post-apocalyptic United States, specifically the East Coast.[12] The core concept emphasized extraction shooter mechanics combined with massively multiplayer online (MMO) elements, where players would engage in player-versus-player-versus-environment (PvPvE) combat, looting resources, crafting items, and navigating seamless large-scale environments without loading screens, either on foot or by vehicle.[3] This vision drew comparisons to titles like Escape from Tarkov for its high-stakes extraction focus amid zombie threats and rival survivors, though Fntastic positioned it as an ambitious evolution with persistent world dynamics and cooperative survival.[13] The game was developed using Unreal Engine, initially version 4, with Fntastic—a small studio of approximately 36 members founded shortly before development began in 2019—highlighting their intent to create expansive, detailed open worlds despite limited prior experience in large-scale MMOs.[14] [15] Early promotional materials showcased cinematic footage of urban decay, horde encounters, and base-building potential, underscoring ambitions for innovative survival systems in a realistic contemporary setting ravaged by a viral outbreak.[13] Funding came primarily from publisher Mytona, which supported the project's scope from its inception, enabling Steam page activation and building pre-release interest that amassed over one million wishlists by early 2022, briefly making it one of the platform's top anticipated titles.[16] [17] This early traction reflected hype around the concept's blend of familiar zombie tropes with MMO persistence, though the studio's modest size raised questions about feasibility even at announcement.[4]Production and Funding
Fntastic, founded in 2015 by Russian brothers Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev and headquartered in Singapore, had a track record of developing smaller-scale titles prior to The Day Before, including The Wild Eight, Dead Dozen, and Radiant. [16] [18] These earlier projects were modest in scope and resources compared to the multiplayer survival shooter ambition of The Day Before, with the studio employing approximately 27 staff members at the time. [19] [20] The game's production was fully funded by its publisher, Mytona, a prominent Russian mobile game company that conducted milestone reviews of development builds to ensure progress. [21] Despite this backing, Fntastic's limited internal capabilities led to heavy reliance on external resources, including outsourced trailer production and extensive use of purchased Unity asset store models for prototypes and in-game elements. [22] [23] These constraints manifested in a development process marked by apparent underinvestment in original asset creation, with much of the game's content derived from pre-existing marketplace packs rather than bespoke development. [24] Such practices, while common in resource-strapped indie productions, highlighted the studio's challenges in scaling up from prior modest efforts without proportional expansion in team expertise or budget allocation for custom work. [24] Post-release financial shortfalls ultimately severed ties with Mytona and depleted funds for ongoing support. [25] [26]Delays and Internal Challenges
The development of The Day Before encountered several postponements between 2021 and 2023. Originally targeted for early access release in June 2022, the project was delayed in May 2022 to March 2023 to accommodate a shift from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, which required substantial reworking of assets and systems to support the game's open-world survival mechanics.[17] [27] A further delay was announced on January 25, 2023, pushing the early access debut to November 10, 2023, after the game was temporarily removed from Steam due to a trademark dispute over the title "The Day Before," which conflicted with an existing U.S. trademark held by another entity.[28] [24] Fntastic indicated that this postponement aligned with pre-existing plans to refine development, independent of the legal issue.[29] The timeline shifted again in late 2023, with early access rescheduled to December 7 following an additional one-month extension to polish core features.[4] Internally, Fntastic grappled with the engine transition's technical demands, which the studio attributed to enhancing graphical fidelity and performance for its ambitious multiplayer survival framework involving up to 64 players in persistent zones.[30] The small team, led by founders Eduard and Aisen Okun, faced strains from scaling a complex MMO prototype, including reports of imposed tight deadlines and scope creep that outpaced resources.[31] [32] Fntastic later reflected that overambitious goals relative to team capacity contributed to these hurdles, though the studio maintained the changes were essential for quality.[33]Marketing and Pre-Release Hype
Trailers and Promised Features
The Day Before's initial announcement trailer, released on January 29, 2021, presented the game as an open-world MMO survival title set in a post-pandemic United States overrun by infected humans, with footage illustrating player characters piloting off-road vehicles through derelict cities, scavenging resources, and participating in cooperative or competitive encounters against both zombies and other survivors.[34] [13] Subsequent promotional videos built on this foundation, including the October 15, 2021, release date trailer that highlighted environmental variety and basic traversal mechanics across urban and rural landscapes.[35] A January 3, 2023, 4K gameplay reveal trailer focused on technical capabilities, demonstrating ray-traced lighting and Nvidia DLSS support while showing extended sequences of characters jogging and driving seamlessly through abandoned neighborhoods, emphasizing the promised fluid open-world navigation.[36] [6] Final pre-launch trailers in November 2023, such as the official gameplay overview, reinforced the core vision of post-apocalyptic survival on the US East Coast, featuring elements like infected combat, vehicle handling, and multiplayer coordination.[37] [38] Developer Fntastic's Steam page and announcements detailed promised features including an expansive playable area, player-driven economy systems for trading looted items, dynamic multiplayer events involving hordes and rival factions, cross-platform compatibility across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, as well as base-building through customizable home improvements and extraction-style looting runs amid persistent world threats.[3] [39] These materials propelled the game to Steam's top wishlisted status, surpassing several million entries by late 2023 and fueling widespread pre-release sales expectations.[4][17]Community Engagement and Sales Buildup
Fntastic fostered community interest through periodic developer streams and social media updates, including devlogs that detailed production progress and addressed delays. For example, a February 2023 dev vlog highlighted volunteer contributions to Discord moderation and Steam page management, aiming to sustain enthusiasm amid postponed reveals.[40] These interactions occurred on the game's Discord server, where members received roadmap information and direct responses from the team.[41] Roadmap updates emphasized ongoing development milestones, such as the May 2022 announcement of switching to Unreal Engine 5, which extended the timeline to early 2023 while promising enhanced features.[17] Subsequent communications in January 2023 explained further delays to November 10 due to external disputes, framing them as necessary for quality improvements.[42] Such efforts propelled The Day Before to become Steam's most wishlisted game in summer 2022, reflecting high pre-release anticipation.[17][43] To convert interest into commitments, Fntastic enabled pre-purchases on Steam, tying them to an early access model launching December 7, 2023, at a price of $39.99.[44] This structure incentivized early buys by granting immediate access upon debut, building on wishlist momentum without additional exclusive content.[45]Pre-Release Controversies
Accusations of Misleading Marketing
In February 2023, online communities and gaming observers accused The Day Before trailers of incorporating pre-made assets from the Unreal Engine Marketplace, suggesting the footage did not represent original development work or the final game build.[46] Reddit users and analysts identified multiple trailer elements, such as environmental objects and animations, directly matching purchasable asset packs available on the marketplace, fueling claims of misleading representation.[47] These allegations extended to assertions that promotional videos featured edited or scripted sequences disconnected from actual in-engine progress, with discrepancies like identical environments appearing in unrelated project demos.[48] By mid-2023, skepticism intensified over the lack of transparent alpha or beta testing to validate promised features like large-scale multiplayer survival mechanics and urban exploration.[49] Although Fntastic announced a beta phase in April 2023 ahead of the planned November release, community discussions highlighted the absence of public footage, participant testimonials, or independent verification, interpreting the radio silence as evasion of scrutiny.[50] This opacity contrasted with industry norms for high-profile titles, prompting comparisons to low-effort "asset flip" projects where minimal custom coding assembles marketplace content into a superficial product.[51] YouTube creators and forums amplified these concerns throughout 2023, documenting visual mismatches between trailers and any available devlogs while urging viewers to approach hype cautiously.[52] In November 2023, further accusations emerged of trailers copying shot compositions and UI elements from established titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Grand Theft Auto V, interpreted as deliberate deception to inflate expectations without substantive proof.[5] Such claims, disseminated via content analysis videos and Reddit threads, contributed to widespread pre-launch distrust, with calls for platform investigations into marketing practices.[53]Developer Defenses and Evidence Claims
In response to growing pre-release skepticism regarding the authenticity of The Day Before's development, Fntastic asserted that the game had been built in-house by a dedicated team over five years, emphasizing substantial effort rather than reliance on pre-made assets.[54] The studio denied accusations of creating an "asset flip," a term referring to games assembled primarily from purchased or reused store assets with minimal original work, stating explicitly, "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."[51] [55] Fntastic attributed visual or mechanical similarities noted by critics—such as animations resembling those in titles like Escape from Tarkov—to standard templates and tools common in game engines, rather than theft or unauthorized copying.[56] The developer highlighted its use of a proprietary engine called Continent, initially developed internally for team communication before being adapted for game production, as evidence of independent technical capabilities independent of mainstream engines like Unity or Unreal Engine.[57] This claim was positioned to counter doubts raised by the absence of typical engine-specific UI elements in promotional trailers. On December 4, 2023, Fntastic issued a public statement apologizing for "poor marketing" that fueled doubts but reaffirming the project's legitimacy, noting the absence of crowdfunding, pre-orders, or investor funds to underscore self-reliance.[51] The studio promised additional transparency, including post-launch demonstrations and updates, to reveal more about the development process without spoiling gameplay elements beforehand, while urging restraint from labeling the effort a scam amid "brutal" online criticism.[58] [55] Fntastic expressed no grudge toward skeptics but maintained that partial builds and internal progress justified continued trust.Release and Launch Issues
Early Access Debut
The Day Before launched in early access on Steam for Windows on December 7, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. PT, marking its exclusive debut on the platform as an online multiplayer survival game requiring constant internet connectivity for server-based play.[59] [60] Publisher Mytona handled digital distribution through Steam, with the title priced at $39.99 during this phase, lower than the planned $49.99 for the full release.[61] [62] The early access model was intended to allow iterative development based on player feedback, with Fntastic outlining a roadmap for expansions including new maps, vehicles, and content updates over the subsequent months.[63] Upon servers going live, the game achieved a peak of 38,104 concurrent players on Steam, reflecting initial interest generated from prior marketing efforts.[64] This figure represented the highest simultaneous engagement during the debut period, though concurrent numbers began declining within hours as players encountered the live multiplayer setup.[65] Mytona supported the launch logistics, including server infrastructure managed through Steam's backend, while emphasizing community-driven improvements in official announcements.[66]Technical Problems and Player Reports
Upon its early access launch on December 7, 2023, The Day Before suffered from pervasive technical instability, with players frequently encountering crashes to desktop that halted gameplay sessions. These issues persisted despite basic troubleshooting attempts like driver updates and system restarts, affecting a broad range of PC configurations and rendering the game unplayable for many users within hours of release.[67][68] Server problems compounded the crashes, including connectivity failures and unstable matchmaking that resulted in failed queue attempts or deserted lobbies, preventing consistent multiplayer engagement. Community reports on the game's subreddit and Discord documented these game-breaking bugs, such as progression locks and rendering errors, which emerged en masse during the debut period.[69][70] The core gameplay loop deviated markedly from advertised open-world persistence, manifesting as isolated, lobby-based PvE instances akin to an extraction shooter rather than a seamless, shared MMO environment with ongoing world state. This structural mismatch, alongside reports of confined map areas lacking advertised scale and depth in mechanics like crafting, fueled immediate player frustration over unfulfilled technical promises.[71][72] Steam user reviews reflected these failures, surging to "Overwhelmingly Negative" status— with over 10,000 submissions averaging around 13% positive—mere hours into launch, as players highlighted the barrage of bugs, absent persistence, and subpar optimization on mid-range hardware.[71][73][74]Reception
Critical Reviews
The Day Before received overwhelmingly negative reviews from the limited number of professional critics who evaluated it during its brief availability, with scores typically in the single digits out of 10 or 100. IGN awarded the game a 1/10, describing it as "easily one of the worst games I've ever played" due to its technical instability, absence of promised multiplayer features like large-scale open-world survival, and potential risks to system security from unoptimized code that caused crashes and hardware strain.[75] The review emphasized that the final product bore little resemblance to years of promotional material, delivering instead a stripped-down lobby-based shooter lacking meaningful content or polish.[75] GamesRadar similarly condemned the title as having "no redeeming qualities," critiquing its reductive extraction shooter mechanics, repetitive urban environments devoid of engaging encounters, and failure to implement core survival elements such as crafting or dynamic events advertised in trailers.[76] Critics universally highlighted the game's unplayable state at launch, including frequent server disconnects, bugs rendering progression impossible, and empty instances that contradicted claims of a persistent MMO world. While some noted marginally functional gunplay in isolated moments, this was overshadowed by the consensus that the release represented a profound betrayal of consumer expectations built through extensive marketing.[75][76] Aggregate critic scores on platforms like Metacritic reflected this dismal reception, hovering below 30/100 where calculable from the sparse reviews published before the game's delisting, with outlets attributing the poor quality directly to discrepancies between hyped features—like vehicle combat and faction-based PvP—and the barebones extraction loop delivered.[77] No major review praised the game's ambition or potential for updates, instead framing it as a cautionary example of vaporware-like development culminating in substandard execution.[75]Player Feedback and Metrics
Upon its early access launch on December 7, 2023, The Day Before rapidly accumulated thousands of user reviews on Steam, achieving an "Overwhelmingly Negative" rating within hours, with sentiments overwhelmingly centered on allegations of misleading marketing rather than gameplay mechanics alone.[78][79] By December 8, over 12,000 reviews had been posted, the majority decrying the game as a "scam" due to unfulfilled promises of an open-world multiplayer survival experience.[74][80] Player discussions on platforms like Reddit and Steam forums amplified these complaints, with users cataloging specific feature omissions such as the lack of player-versus-player (PvP) combat, which pre-release trailers had showcased through depictions of interpersonal conflict in a persistent world, contrasted against the lobby-based, PvE-only extraction shooter that launched.[75] Threads highlighted how promised elements like seamless open-world exploration and dynamic multiplayer interactions were replaced by instanced sessions without competitive player engagement, fueling narratives of deliberate misrepresentation.[81] This backlash manifested in quantifiable shifts in community sentiment, with review aggregates stabilizing at "Mostly Negative" as initial outrage subsided but core dissatisfaction persisted, reflecting a broader erosion of trust in developer assurances for the zombie survival genre.[82] Players expressed wariness toward subsequent titles mimicking similar hype cycles, citing The Day Before as a cautionary example in discussions of upcoming survival MMOs.[83]Shutdown and Immediate Aftermath
Studio Closure Announcement
On December 11, 2023, Fntastic issued an official statement announcing the immediate closure of the studio, attributing the decision to the financial failure of The Day Before and a subsequent lack of funding to sustain operations.[84][85] The declaration specified that all revenue generated from the game's sales would be allocated to repaying studio debts, with the company emphasizing that it had not solicited public investment through crowdfunding or pre-orders during development.[86][87] In the statement, Fntastic denied allegations of intentional deception, asserting that the team had exerted maximum effort but ultimately miscalculated its technical capabilities, resulting in unmet promises on gameplay features and scope.[86][88] This admission highlighted delivery shortfalls, including deviations from pre-release marketing that depicted a more polished urban survival experience, though the studio maintained no fraudulent intent.[86] The closure prompted abrupt layoffs across the studio's staff without prior warning or severance, effectively terminating operations and shifting focus to debt resolution in coordination with publisher Mytona, amid emerging tensions over intellectual property handover rights.[15][89]Server Shutdown and Delisting
Following the studio's closure announcement on December 11, 2023, The Day Before was delisted from Steam that same day, preventing new purchases and limiting access to existing owners only.[90][91] Publisher Mytona confirmed on December 22, 2023, that the game would be fully retired, with servers scheduled to shut down on January 22, 2024, exactly 45 days after the December 7 early access launch.[92] This timeline marked the operational end for the multiplayer survival MMO, which relied heavily on online connectivity. Concurrent player data from SteamDB illustrates the rapid decline in engagement leading to shutdown: the game reached a peak of 38,104 simultaneous players on launch day, December 7, 2023, but active users dwindled to near zero by early 2024, reflecting widespread abandonment amid persistent technical instability.[93] On January 22, 2024, Mytona executed the server deactivation as planned, rendering the game's core online features—such as multiplayer sessions, loot extraction, and dynamic world events—inaccessible and effectively bricking the title for all players.[94] While the game included provisions for local save data storage on player devices, these files proved insufficient for continued play without server authentication and backend support, resulting in the permanent loss of interactive components.[95] No formal preservation initiatives, such as offline modes or archival releases, were announced by the publisher prior to deactivation, leaving the experience confined to pre-shutdown recordings and personal captures by the community.[95]Refunds and Financial Consequences
Refund Processes and Rates
Following the studio's closure announcement on December 11, 2023, Fntastic and publisher Mytona committed to facilitating full refunds for all purchasers of The Day Before on Steam, irrespective of playtime exceeding the platform's standard two-hour limit.[89][96] Steam cooperated by extending refund eligibility, initially processing requests for affected players despite policy constraints, as the game's servers were rendered inoperable shortly after launch.[7] This process overrode initial denials for users surpassing the playtime threshold, enabling returns through direct Steam support tickets.[97] Data from a leaked internal message by Fntastic CEO Eduard Gotovtsev indicated approximately 201,000 copies sold in the first days post-launch, with 91,694 refunds approved by December 12, 2023, yielding an initial rate of 45.6%.[98] This high early refund volume reflected widespread dissatisfaction, though exact figures varied slightly across reports, with some estimating around 46%.[99] Post-closure, Steam announced proactive full refunds for all remaining owners upon the permanent server shutdown scheduled for January 22, 2024, effectively approaching 100% recovery for buyers.[100][101]| Metric | Value | Source Date |
|---|---|---|
| Copies Sold | ~201,000 | December 12, 2023[98] |
| Initial Refunds | 91,694 | December 12, 2023[98] |
| Initial Refund Rate | 45.6–46% | December 12, 2023[98] |
| Final Policy | Full refunds for all | January 2024[102] |