The Day Before Dev Shutdown Days After Release

One of the most recent examples of ambition, hype, and dreadful development, The Day Before is a case study of what not to do with a game. The “MMO” was announced back in 2021 with a gameplay trailer showing the basic mechanics, and was set to release last June. Then The Day Before was delayed several months as it moved from Unreal 4 to Unreal 5, the hot new engine that The Matrix Awakens was made in. Despite being made in the engine that this mindblowing playable tech demo was made in, many were skeptical it would ever see its release.

It wasn’t until last month we got an update. Originally The Day Before was scheduled to release in March of this year with the game engine swap, but trademark news and general speculation scuppered that. Some were even willing to call it vaporware, generally something to be skeptical about ever seeing the light of day. However, we got the news that it would be released into Early Access on the 7th of December, which was only a few days ago now. This is where the story becomes far more interesting, believe me.

Many were excited, (and of course, they were) the hype of this hot new “MMO” as it was advertised had some sort of interest around it. Surely if The Day Before was delayed so much, it would be great, right? Press didn’t get hands-on until the day of release with everyone else, as we all learned that in fact, Second Wind’s Nick Calandra was right when he worked for Gamurs and The Escapist, previously calling it a scam. This is on top of calling all “employees” “internal volunteers,” with some that worked on The Day Before doing unpaid work. In hindsight, this explains a lot.

FNTASTIC, the developer behind The Day Before, was funded by Russian-founded but New Zealand-based (with other offices around the world) Mytona. For reference, Mytona is a mobile game publisher that claims to be one of the biggest in the world. FNTASTIC itself was founded and previously based out of Yakutsk, Sakha Republic, Russia. I say previously because you’ve read the title, only days after release The Day Before developer closed its doors.

The statement on the developer’s website reads: “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.”

Now, I find this interesting: “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.” There is no mention of the publisher, Mytona. No mention whatsoever in the whole statement.

At the time of writing, the Steam Page is still up for The Day Before, though the sale of the game has been removed overall. You can still pick up the developer’s other titles, including Propnight, which is also published by Mytona. In the four days The Day Before was available to purchase and play on Steam, the concurrent player base dropped 90%. With over 20,000 reviews on Steam, and more than 17,000 negative reviews, refunds were quick and so was the Overwhelmingly Negative label on Steam.