'The Day Before' Developer FNTASTIC Shuts Down Four Days After Game's Disastrous Launch, Leading To Intense Suspicion The Whole Project Was A Scam

It's been quite a bad weekend for Russian game developers Fntastic. Just four days after they launched their controversial "MMO" The Day Before on Steam, the company has shut its doors.

While it hasn't been uncommon for bad game developers to quit game development after disastrous launches in 2023, the situation with Fntastic and The Day Before has many highly suspicious that the whole project was a scam from the start, and the studio's closure amounts to the "cut and run" finale of their plan.

The Day Before has been dogged by suspicion that the game is a scam for over a year now. The idea started after the game was shown with a pre-rendered trailer that was suspected of copying from other major video game trailers. Later trailers showed a significant downgrade in graphics.

During development, it came out that Fntastic was using unpaid labor to partially create the game. Two delays led to suspicion that the game wouldn't even come out at all. Throughout the process, Fntastic maintained the game was real, not crowd-funded, and would, in fact, come out.

Come out (in early access) it did on Friday, and it did not look good. The initial claim that the game was an "MMO" was immediately identified as "not true" when players realized the game was more an extraction shooter than an MMO. It also appeared quite buggy, as clips of the game breaking in various ways spread widely online within hours of the game's launch. Reportedly, nearly 50% of the 200,000 buyers refunded the game after getting it on Steam.

In its statement about closing, Fntastic said the game was a "failure" financially and "all income received" will be used to pay off debts (the game was selling for $40). They once again insisted that the game was not crowd-funded in an apparent attempt to preempt any talk about the game being a scam.

That was not successful, as many seem more sure than ever that the game was, in fact, a scam from the start. At least as of this morning, the game sold (and didn't refund) over 100,000 copies at $40 a pop, so many are finding it hard to believe the game could be considered a failure after just four days in early access. The line about "profits" being used to pay off "debts" did not strike many as particularly honest, either.

It's important to note that at this point, it's unclear what the developer's closure means with regards to honoring future refund requests. However, until everyone who purchased The Day Before gets their requested refunds, it's likely that the idea the whole project was a scam — and the potential legal repercussions of said scam — will linger over Fntastic.