Condemning 'The Day Before': The background of a failed phenomenon and the role of content creators.
The Day Before is long gone, but those behind the studio haven't stopped complaining. According to a new statement from Fntastic, it's not the developers' fault that the failed game "The Day Before" has disappeared. The blame lies with the "bloggers" and "content creators" who have "unleashed a goldmine" by profiting from a hate campaign against the failed game. And Dr. Disrespect backed it, so why is anyone complaining?
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“The Day Before” was revealed in 2021 with a few gameplay trailers that generated excitement for what was initially being touted as an open-world survival MMO. It was expected to combine elements from The Division, GTA V, and The Last of Us, with Fntastic stating in an IGN Fan Fest video in February 2021 that the game would be “a true innovation for the massively multiplayer online survival industry.” A few release dates were announced, but due to the transition from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 and, later, an apparent trademark issue, “The Day Before” suffered delays.
None of this stopped the game from becoming one of the most coveted titles on Steam. However, that excitement quickly faded once the game was released, as players criticized it not only for bugs but also for its unfulfilled promises. The open-world survival MMO was essentially a weapons extraction game, similar to Escape From Tarkov, and its trajectory has been on a steep decline ever since.
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A few days after the release of “The Day Before” on December 7, 2023, and after many reviews that characterized the game as a failure, the Fntastic studio closed its doors, called things “unfortunate” and deleted everything, announcing that servers would be shut down on January 22, 2024. However, it did not remain silent, on the contrary, it used Twitter on January 24 to refute some “misinformation” from anonymous sources and to criticize “bloggers” and “content creators” for the disastrous failure of the game.
In its statement, Fntastic said the studio has “always conducted its business with integrity,” noting that it has had an excellent relationship with publisher Mytona since the “The Day Before” reveal in 2021. The studio went on to say that accusations that Fntastic “lyed on players and investors” were untrue and that the developers “didn’t take a single dime” from anyone. According to Fntastic, the real profiteers were bloggers and content creators who “made big money creating fake information with big headlines from the start to get views and followers.”
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The team broke down exactly why it believes “The Day Before” failed, describing it as “the experiment where you’re asked to count pink objects in a room and then remember blue ones.” What Fntastic seems to be talking about is a form of confirmation bias, as the studio explained that streamers like Herschel “DrDisrespect” Beahm IV had an “immediate” critical eye for “The Day Before,” but by that point the hate was so overwhelming that no one remembered their comments, even after updates that fixed its issues. The developers said that despite the disrespect the game faced, it was still being sold on the black market for $200, which certainly suggests its popularity. As such, Fntastic has insisted that people should “sign up on our social networks” to see what the team is up to in the future.
In the end, “The Day Before” seems to have come to an end, with the servers officially shutting down earlier this week. However, based on this new statement, it seems like the developers haven’t stopped making games, especially since the former studio heads are already reportedly working on a new one.
Source of information: kotaku.com
