News

The Day Before dev Fntastic offers heartfelt apology after closure: ‘s*** happens’

Ezgif 1 324357ad3b B54b 4617380

The Day Before – the day after has been quite the comedown (Picture: Fntastic)

Not only has open world shooter The Day Before not lasted the week but neither has developer Fntastic, in one of the year’s biggest flops.

If people were being sensible about things, there was absolutely no reason to expect The Day Before to work out. It was wildly ambitious, it was being made by an entirely untested developer, and it was constantly being accused of being a scam, long before it was ever released.

An open world zombie survival MMO, the game officially launched on Thursday, December 7 and yet just four days later, not only was the early access version made impossible to buy on Steam, but developer Fntastic has announced they’re to shut down.

They don’t seem particularly upset or reflective about it though, with one tweet from them simply saying: ‘This was our first big experience. S*** happens.’

This seems to imply they’re going to give it all another go with another game, at some later date, which given how gullible some people were over The Day Before may well work out for them.

‘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,’ reads Fntastic’s statement.

‘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.’

Ss A4b0c8866a05df2acf9be3c8eb1e65c2a758e490.1920x1080 F249 3756659

The Day Before – the game was meant to be The Division with zombies (Picture: Fntastic)

Fntastic has always insisted that the game is not a scam but, at the very least, the marketing surrounding it was incredibly naïve and overly optimistic.

At time of writing the game is still listed on Steam but it’s not possible to buy it. Fntastic themselves admit they don’t know what the future of the game will be, but for now the servers are still live.

Leaks on Reddit suggest the game sold 200,000 copies via Steam and has so far has had 91,000 refunds. Originally it cost £33, which is a staggering amount to waste on a game that was constantly being described as a scam.

How to get a The Day Before refund

The only good news about any of this is that at least it’s easy to get refunds through Steam. All you need to do is go to the Help section, click on Purchases and then choose The Day Before.

At this point, Steam is aware of the issues with the game, so it doesn’t really matter which problem you pick from the list but ‘Gameplay or technical issue’ is probably the most appropriate.

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, and follow us on Twitter.

MORE : Immortals Of Aveum a flop as studio cuts nearly half its staff

MORE : Marvel video game curse continues as Midnight Suns confirmed as major flop

MORE : Need For Speed Unbound has been a mega flop in the UK physical sales charts

Follow Metro Gaming on Twitter and email us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

gamecentral-signup-logo-9205058

Sign up to all the exclusive gaming content, latest releases before they’re seen on the site.

Privacy Policy »

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Spread the love
Show More

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button