The drama-filled saga behind one in all Steam’s most-anticipated video games of 2023 simply took its weirdest flip but. The Day Earlier than maker Fntastic introduced it should stop operations lower than per week after accusations of swindling gamers with a large bait-and-switch when it got here to the true nature of its The Final of Us-looking survival recreation.
“At present, we announce the closure of the Fntastic studio,” began a statement tweeted by the studio on December 11. “Sadly, The Day Earlier than has failed financially, and we lack the funds to proceed. All revenue acquired is getting used to repay money owed to our companions.”
Fntastic wrote that it labored “tirelessly for 5 years” on the shooter with out ever taking cash from gamers by Early Entry, pre-orders, or crowdfunding. Whereas the way forward for The Day Earlier than and the studio’s different on-line video games is “unknown,” the servers will apparently stay operational in the interim.
“We apologize if we didn’t meet your expectations,” the assertion continued. “We did all the pieces inside our energy, however sadly, we miscalculated our capabilities. Creating video games is an extremely difficult endeavor.”
On the identical time its chopping its losses, Fntastic additionally appears to be denying accountability for the present mess surrounding The Day Earlier than. Considered one of Steam’s most-wishlisted video games earlier this yr, gamers flocked to the comparatively unknown launch which hit over 400,000 viewers on Twitch and 30,000 concurrent gamers on PC on its first day dwell.
What they shortly found, nevertheless, was that the Unreal Engine recreation that shined in trailers was not the zombie survival MMO initially marketed, however quite a buggy and comparatively empty extraction shooter. The $40 launch was panned in hundreds of Steam evaluations with gamers calling it a “rip-off,” complaining of server points and damaged ranges, with many submitting refund requests.
The flash-in-the-pan launch, which left The Day Earlier than with a score of “largely unfavourable,” adopted months of debate about whether or not the sport was even actual. After accusations of exploiting voluntary labor, deceptive followers with plagiarized trailers and asset flips, and a authorized dispute that briefly received the sport pulled from Steam amid a number of delays, gamers started to marvel if The Day Earlier than was all smoke and mirrors. It might need been higher if it had been.
Fntastic rejected hypothesis impugning its integrity and motives final week, crticizing those that “didn’t imagine in us.” “To our future participant who will dive into this recreation on December 7: We made this for you in order that you’ll benefit from the recreation and it turns into a celebration,” the studio wrote in a press release on the time. “Collectively, we’ll proceed bettering the sport and including content material.”
Simply 4 days later, that not appears to be the case.
Replace 12/11/2023 5:53 p.m. ET: The Day Earlier than has been faraway from Steam.
