The Day Before developers respond to fans demanding an explanation, ‘s**t happens’
That’s not very professional
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If you haven’t been keeping up with all the juicy drama surroundingThe Day Before, an absolute disaster of an early access zombie survival game, then here’s a quick run down.
The game was first unveiled back in 2021, with an impressive announcement trailer that showcased some seriously good visuals and a whole host of interesting mechanics reminiscent of online games likeThe Division 2.
After two years of setbacks and delays, however, the game eventually released last Thursday (7 December, 2023) and turned out to be almost nothing like what was first shown. Rather than being an open-world survival MMO,The Day Beforewas actually more of an extraction shooter in the vein ofEscape From Tarkovwith zombies awkwardly thrown in.
It was also absolutely overflowing with bugs and technical issues so it’s safe to say that people who had spent their hard-earned money on the game (which was priced at $39.99 / £33.50) were less than impressed.
In response to its incredibly rough reception, the game’s developers, Fntastic, suddenly deleted all of the content over on theirYouTube channel, removing all previous trailers seemingly in an attempt to hide the obvious discrepancies between what was advertised and what players eventually got.
The company then posted a lengthy statement to Twitter saying that the game“has failed financially”and that they were shutting down.The Day Beforewas subsequently removed from sale onSteam, though it is currently unclear whether this was requested by the developers or an action taken by the platform’s owner, Valve.
This leads us right up to today, where Fntastic has bizarrely been individually responding to angry fans on social media. “Unbelievable that you guys hyped this game up so much and this is the end result,” commented user@Kypershoton a Twitter thread where the developer was laying out their plans for customer refunds. “This was our first big experience,” replied Fntastic, “S**t happens.”
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Elsewhere,one fan respondedwith a mockup logo for “The Day Before 2”, commenting “hell yeah the comeback is real.” Dashing all of their hopes and dreams, Fntastic simply responded, “Nope, we’re closing.”
This is obviously massively unprofessional and seems indicative of a studio well out of its depth. The future of the game is currently up in the air, but this seems like a fitting end to one of the weirdest sagas of the last few years.
For some titles that are actually worth playing, see our guides to thebest indie gamesor thebest FPS games.
Dash is a technology journalist who covers gaming hardware at TechRadar. Before joining the TechRadar team, he was writing gaming articles for some of the UK’s biggest magazines including PLAY, Edge, PC Gamer, and SFX. Now, when he’s not getting his greasy little mitts on the newest hardware or gaming gadget, he can be found listening to J-pop or feverishly devouring the latest Nintendo Switch otome.
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