According to Steam’s data, as of the time this article is written, the zombie survival Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) The Day Before developed by the now closed Russo-Singaporean studio Fntastic has received nearly 20,000 negative reviews from users on the platform. With a positive rating of about 14%, it currently ranks 8th on Steam’s list of most negatively reviewed games.
How did this happen?
The Hype of The Day Before
On January 29, 2021, the open-world multiplayer survival game entered gamers’ sights. It gained a lot of attention with the realistic physics, realist picture quality, and simple user interface shown in its official launch trailer.
This led the game to secure the top spot on Steam’s wishlist ranking in less than a year.
The Controversy of The Day Before
Despite a successful campaign launch, The Day Before went through two game delays, two live stream delays, a trademark dispute, and a phase of recruiting volunteer developers before finally launching on Steam as an early access title on December 7.
While intermittently releasing actual gameplay footage, the studio also continuously advertised for their other game Propnight and office software Continent.
A Trail of Delays and Disappointments
The game was originally advertised to launch in June 2022, but a month before the release, Fntastic delayed the launch to March 2023, stating that they were upgrading the game’s engine from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5.
In January 2023, Fntastic was under a trademark controversy with the name The Day Before. Once again, they announced that the game would be delayed until November 2023.
Gamers were confused because multiple games and softwares were called The Day Before on Steam. This confusion led to a growing concern among the gaming community, who questioned the significance of the trademark dispute and why it warranted such an extensive delay in the game’s release. Fntastic then admitted that the delay was decided long ago and that the trademark dispute was not the main issue.
“We planned to move the game’s release before and plan to announce it with [publisher] Mytona in a 10-minute gameplay video. And then you all know what happened. So to be on the safe side, to ensure there are no more transfers, we, along with the publisher, chose November 10. That is a safe date, given the trademark dispute.” Fntastic told IGN in an interview
On November 1, 2023, with only nine days left before the expected launch, despite legally gaining back their game’s name, Fntastic announced that official launch would be on December 8th. Delayed once again.
Launch Day Letdown
On the day of its release, the peak number of online players nearly reached 40,000.
But, despite being an open world game focused on massively multiplayer gameplay, The Day Before did not have adequate servers ready for its launch. This resulted in very unstable connections for players. Many were unable to join the game, while the lucky few that could suffered performance issues.
Players also soon found out that the game not only lacked some of the most basic required actions found in post-apocalyptic survival games, such as climbing, vaulting, closing doors, as well as missing animations for opening boxes and cabinets, avoiding zombies, and melee attacks, but it was also filled with various bugs. For example, after aiming down and crouching, the player’s movement lacked animation, appearing in third-person view as if the character was sliding. Other issues included sudden enlargement of characters, players’ weapons disappearing abruptly, and a lot more.
Gameplay-wise, since the zombies also had no climbing system, players were technically invincible when standing on something as high as a table.
Additionally, The Day Before failed to implement the essential resource collection and management system that is crucial in survival games.
In theory, in MMO survival games, when a player is defeated, their carried resources should drop and be available for other players to pick up, while the defeated player would need to recollect their lost resources.
However, in The Day Before, as an online game, players about to be defeated could simply quit the game, disappearing from the opponent’s view and retain all their resources. This led to the collapse of the game’s player-led environment and economy, from the very first day.
When encountering other players, one could simply use Alt + F4 to force quit the game and avoid death. Later on, players even discovered a bug that allowed for money duplication, resulting in numerous millionaires appearing in New Fortune City, the games’ capital, on the very first day.
However, force-quitting also came with its risks for players. Due to the multitude of bugs, players risked having their entire progress deleted if they disconnected from servers.
The problem with that type of game is that it is extremely challenging to pull it off. You’re basically in development hell in all areas you can be. Insane server load & backend complexity, lots of gameplay systems, hard performance constraints (shooter), huge world, proc-gen, cheating, trolling, community mgmt, the hardest type of game to test in QA, and so much more.
It’s just insanely expensive to craft a game like that.
— Reddit user u/bigsbender on The Day Before’s subreddit.
A compilation of bugs and glitches on The Day Before’s launch day:
Questionable Development Practices
Of course, these issues can be understandable in a game developed by a small company mostly made up of volunteers. In the past, many successful games started off with unfinished infrastructure and processes, due to their over ambitious aspects.
However, over ambition was not the main issue for Fntastic. Rather, their apparent cheapness or lack of funds was a much bigger detriment to their developing process. Many of the game’s models and materials were purchased from the Unreal Engine’s Marketplace, at a total cost of no more than $10,000, according to estimates from Reddit user /u/EpicStory1998.
Opens in new windowAlso, following the announcement by the development team about the engine upgrade to Unreal Engine 5, Fntastic began inviting netizens to volunteer their services to help with the development work without compensation. According to information previously released on the game’s official website, the number of volunteers recruited by Fntastic was almost twice the number of the company’s employees.
Adding to the complexity of The Day Before’s development is the revelation that the team wasn’t paying anyone for over two years of game development. The reliance on volunteers, many of whom were enthusiastic about game development but not professionals, raises significant questions about the project’s management and execution. This approach casts doubt on the ability to deliver the high-quality experience promised in the game’s trailers. The discrepancy between the polished gameplay shown in marketing and the actual game that was delivered by a largely volunteer based team points to a misalignment between expectation and reality.
Opens in new windowMarketing Missteps
While utilizing a significant amount of free labor, The Day Before also chose to take shortcuts in its game promotion and marketing. Its last trailer essentially “paid homage” to other games, from the storyboard to the dialogue, closely imitating various aspects of them. (Tom Clancy’s The Division, COD: Black Ops Cold War, The Last of Us, Snow Runner, RDR2, Cyberpunk 2077, etc.)
The days after The Day Before
Just four days after The Day Before’s release, the developer Fntastic announced the closure of its studios.
Opens in new windowNowadays, the website only displays the closure announcement (shown above).
On December 22, the production team of The Day Before released a community announcement on Steam stating that they had ceased operations. The game’s servers will be shut down on January 22. After discussions between Mytona Fntastic and Valve, it was decided that all players would be issued a mandatory refund, regardless of how long gamers played. Even activation keys were deactivated.
Even if this is how it went down, at some point they lied and kept lying to the end. And there’s no way that they didn’t have malicious intent to try to squeeze as much money as they could out of people with a false and subpar product when they released.
But looking at their track record with other games, I really think that you can't assume they were innocent at any point in the process.
— Reddit user u/TheRealHasil on The Day Before’s subreddit.
Before vanishing, Fntastic had some final words to say about their work, in response to the backlash they received.
