The data surrounding developer Fntastic’s December recreation launch, The Day Before, simply obtained lots worse, in response to studies from German recreation shops GameStar and Game Two.
The two websites printed their findings from investigations at present, explaining that they spoke with 16 former staff from the studio in addition to one volunteer and 7 staff from writer Mytona to resolve what occurred behind the scenes to end in final 12 months’s disastrous launch.
In line with the studies, The Day Before wasn’t at all times the extremely bold recreation that had been pitched to gamers for years. It had humble beginnings, with 10 members of a 20-person group initially informed that they might be working on a top-secret however small-scale survival recreation with a wintery aesthetic and cartoonish visuals. These early particulars promised a recreation with a brief story, however the modifications that quickly adopted finally snowballed into the challenge that might turn into The Day Before.
Alterations demanding switches to extra reasonable visuals and bigger areas reportedly got here on all of the sudden, with the websites’ sources saying that a lot of the event group was “disenchanted” by the modifications as a result of they have been pleased with the unique plan. As the general public caught wind of this bold new challenge, administration at Fntastic leaned in on chasing business tendencies.
On-the-fly modifications coincided with different recreation releases as The Day Before builders have been informed to mimic options such because the character creator from in style titles like Baldur’s Gate 3, Grand Theft Auto On-line, and Hogwarts Legacy. Modifications have been so frequent that there have been primarily three variations of The Day Before throughout its growth that have been all utterly completely different.
Unrealistic deadlines, overpromises, and unreasonable calls for are stated to all stem from Fntastic founders and brothers Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev. Some sources say the 2 firm heads would discuss with all the group as a “large household” simply to show round and put stress on employees with spontaneous firings. These occasions have been usually used as a method to “inspire” the group, with one of many group’s 5 testers fired one week earlier than after one of many brothers discovered a bug.
IGN has reached out to Fntastic for remark.
A group member’s elimination was allegedly attributed to their “lack of will,” however easy errors reportedly got here with a very completely different menace: fines. Sources report cases of fines being handed out for small errors, equivalent to when two people have been requested to pay $1,930 for delivering “low high quality” voice recordings. These practices endured beneath relentless durations of crunch, with one worker saying that they by no means labored lower than 16 hours a day: “During the last 12 months and a half, I have never had a Saturday off, and for the final two months I have never had a time without work in any respect.”
Drastically prolonged workdays and 0 off days for months appear to be frequent occurrences among the many Fntastic employees, with one supply saying they discovered themselves “begging for a number of hours break simply to make time for a bathe or a meal.”
The Day Before lastly got here to the world on December 7, 2023 and was shortly adopted by wave after wave of controversy. Fntastic has since introduced that it might shut down, declaring the challenge a monetary failure. The studio then promised patrons refunds whereas writing off their shortcomings with a response: “This was our first large expertise. Shit occurs.”
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than the announcement got here that the servers can be shutting down, with the sport’s official closure arriving simply final week on January 22. In our 1/10 The Day Before Early Entry evaluate, we stated, “The Day Before is well one of many worst video games I’ve ever performed, to the purpose the place I’m afraid to proceed operating it on my PC – and if you happen to didn’t handle to attempt it, you’ll be able to depend your self as one of many fortunate ones.”
Michael Cripe is a contract contributor with IGN. He began writing within the business in 2017 and is greatest recognized for his work at shops equivalent to The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
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