The Day Before developer Fntastic announces surprise closure

In a not so unexpected turn of events, Fntastic, the studio behind The Day Before, has announced effective immediately in a press release on X (formerly Twitter) and their website that they are shuttering operations due to the failure surrounding the launch of The Day Before on Steam. Here is a copy of their official press release:

“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.

We invested all our efforts, resources, and man-hours into the development of The Day Before, which was our first huge game. We really wanted to release new patches to revelt the full potential of the game, but unfortunately, we don’t have the funding to continue the work.

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 Before and Propnight is unknown, but the servers will remain operational.

We apologize if we didn’t meet your expectations. We did everything within our power, but unfortunately, we miscalculated our capabilities. Creating games is an incredibly challenging endeavor.

We’re grateful to everyone who supported us during these difficult years. It’s been a fantastic journey over the past eight years:

• 2015: Opening of the studio
• 2017: Release of the Wild Eight
• 2018: Release of Dead Dozen
• 2018: Release of Radiant One
• 2021: Release of Propnight
• 2023: Release of The Day Before

The Day Before launched on December 7, 2023 and was advertised as an “open-world MMO survival” on the Steam store page but players quickly realized it was nothing more than an empty, bug filled world with a side of zombies sprinkled in along with a touch of Escape from Tarkov. To make matters worse, the developers began scrubbing their official YouTube page of all past videos depicting the nature of the game to help cover up the false advertising complaints.

Because of this, The Day Before quickly earned its place on Steam’s top 10 most hated games list and players all across social media were quickly refunding the game faster than Kratos swinging his Blades of Chaos in turbo mode!

If you are still within your two-hour refund timeframe on Steam, go refund the game immediately. Even if you aren’t within the timeframe, it’s worth a shot now that they’re shuttering operations, even if you attempted prior to the announcement. It could help your case to send them this press release when submitting your refund request. What’s the worst that could happen?