FNTASTIC has delivered a statement revealing that it’s closing its doors permanently, just five days after The Day Before, its post-apocalyptic open-world MMO, released on Steam last week.
Here’s the full statement from FNTASTIC, which explained that it doesn’t have any money left to support the game, although servers will supposedly remain online:
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 reveal 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 Day 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 and quickly drew a ton of negative reviews on Steam, with some calling the game a scam, one that turned out to be an extraction shooter rather than an open-world survival MMO as FNTASTIC had seemingly promised.
“This game is just not what it was sold as and now the company is packing up and dipping with the money just do not buy this game it shouldn’t even still be listed on steam,” said one reviewer.
“Bigger scam than star citizen,” said another.
FNTASTIC appears to have scrubbed its YouTube channel, but trailers for the game, including its announcement from years ago, remain online from other sources:
Discussion (12 replies)
Join Discussion →Wow. That's messed up.
You had to be in complete denial of reality to not realize it is a full blown scam. I'm kind of surprised they even released something even if it is nowhere near what was promised. Probably did it to avoid lawsuits.
Then shuttered so nobody can actually play it. Wow... I feel sorry for those that lost money to this. But hey... lesson learned.
Evidently, the studio changed their name back to "Eight Points" and still exists. As if there weren't enough red flags with this pile of crap already.
Scam
I simply hope that the players who thought they were buying a "genre defining MMO" get a refund as that isn't remotely what was delivered. If nothing else, the developers are guilty of using bait and switch tactics and false advertising. I wouldn't buy anything these guys develop going forward until its delivered and the reviews are in.
Which begs the question: "Who the fuck still preorders games? When will you learn not to do that?"
No one is getting refunds at this point. They're liquidating the brand to pay off debt. And once it's gone who is left to sue? LLC will be defunct.
Scammed with no reprise.
Steam is supposedly giving refunds, even if you played it over 2 hours.
For this game supposedly noone if the main article is correct
"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."
All so we could fleece you on the back end more convincingly.
If this is accurate, then the "scam" comments that are being thrown around are inaccurate.
"failure" certainly, but scam? no.
Sounds to me like they bit off more than they could chew, scaled back as a result, and couldn't even bring that over the finish line, then as a Hail Mary to save the studio decided to release, and hope they got a little revenue to patch things up (After all it wouldn't be the first game to launch fundamentally broken). But it didn't work for them. Oh well.
I think the scam part is that they released a different type of game then was promised , had they done a CP2077 type of thing they might have been able to still try and fix the game, not that I see that working out seeing they ran out of money and not sure that they would have gotten the sales to continue working on the game.