The Day Before, one of Steam’s most wishlisted and highly anticipated games, has been removed from sale after the studio, Fntastic, dramatically went out of business, just days after finally launching its blockbuster game.
The announcement of Fntastic’s shuttering came on the studio’s official Twitter account, where a statement claimed The Day Before "has failed financially", and any income received from the sale of the game would go towards paying off "debts towards our partners". The statement then goes on to explain that the money the studio still had after launching the game simply wasn’t enough to keep the studio going. The game can no longer be purchased on Steam, but the servers apparently remain live for the moment.
It’s an ignominious end to a long-running saga, and one that’s underlined by the fact that the game is, er, apparently not very good. The Day Before had previously been involved in a trademark dispute that meant it was removed from Steam for a while, but that hadn’t stopped it from becoming one of the most anticipated titles of the year. Trailers had previously promised a survival shooter akin to a multiplayer The Last of Us, with players tasked with gathering resources while avoiding zombies and fending off other players.
Unfortunately, when the game launched on December 7, what players actually got was an extremely buggy extraction shooter that had apparently been cobbled together from store-bought assets and barely functional game mechanics. It didn’t even have a melee option, showcasing quite how barebones the game was.
Word got out quickly: Refunds for the game soared, with a message supposedly from Fntastic CEO Eduard Gotovtsev saying a massive 46% of all purchases had been refunded through Steam’s returns policy. Before this, The Day Before had apparently been sitting at over 200,000 units sold, and still sat over 100,000 even after it became clear how broken the game was — hardly small change, but seemingly not enough to keep the studio’s head above water.
There have been claims that the game was a scam from the outset, but Fntastic is maintaining that it is making no profit from the game, and is offering full refunds to all customers, regardless of playtime.