After the announcement in January 2021, The Day Before has long been at the top of the most anticipated games on Steam. Yesterday, it was released on the platform as part of early access. Most of the users who have tried the game, speak about it extremely negatively. Unfortunately, there are good reasons for this.
Disaster at launch
On December 7, Fntastic studio and MYTONA publisher — both were founded in Russia, today they are foreign companies — released the game The Day Before, which until its release was positioned as a "post-apocalyptic open-world MMO".
This is an extremely anticipated title. In the spring of 2022, the game completely bypassed all other games announced on Steam, including Starfield, Bloodlines 2 and Hogwarts Legacy, in terms of the number of users who added it to the vishlists.
Unsurprisingly, the release of The Day Before attracted the attention of a wide audience. At the start of the online title, it reached the mark of 38 thousand players. The project instantly topped the top of the most purchased projects on Steam.
At first, the game performed equally well on Twitch. On the streaming platform, the number of viewers of broadcasts dedicated to The Day Before has almost reached the half-million barrier (at its peak, more than 490 thousand people watched the game).
However, two or three hours after the start of sales (the game is distributed on a premium model, its price tag in the United States is $ 39.99, in Russia they ask 1300 rubles for it), the game's performance began to drop rapidly. At the time of publication of the material, its online number had dropped to 11 thousand players, and the number of viewers on Twitch was up to 30 thousand.
The key reason is the dissatisfaction of the players. The users who bought the title were very disappointed with what they saw. The game currently has an "Extremely negative" rating on Steam. Only 15% of 11 thousand players rated the game positively.
Why are the players unhappy with the game?
Some players who have left negative reviews complain about numerous bugs, as well as performance and server problems. However, this is far from the main problem of The Day Before.
There are a lot of reviews on Steam, which note that the game that came out "from the pen" Fntastic is rather an unimportantly implemented escape shooter in the spirit of Escape from Tarkov than an open-world MMO.
"We got a game in which, without warning, we changed the genre of the game to an extraction shooter with session exits to a location in which only generic quests "give, bring, leave" and a randomly compiled economy where a burger costs more than a gun," one of the comments says.
"This is not an open-world MMO. This is a third—person Tarkov," writes another disappointed player and immediately adds: "The trailers are full of lies."
There are enough reviews in which the game is directly called fraudulent (the term "scam" is used). One of the players writes the following: "This game is not an MMO, as previously advertised. This is misleading."
Another user, who called the game "The Scam Before", states the following in a detailed review: "They showed us gameplay that is NOT this game. They showed us the battles, the open world, zombies, details, graphics... and much more... what did we get... a half-assembled game from assets that is NOT MMO."
The problem is also in the quality of implementation. Players write that the available locations are lifeless, there is nothing to do in them. Opponents are rare. Loot, which is one of the main mechanics, is implemented unsuccessfully (including it can be difficult to get into the active zone, which will allow, for example, to open a drawer). There is little content. The possibilities of exploring locations are significantly limited.
Players also noticed that Fntastic has deleted many old videos of the game from its YouTube channel. Judging by the comments, they find it suspicious.
If you turn to the archive page of the channel and compare it with the current one, you can see that indeed many of the previous trailers and teasers of The Day Before are missing.
On the left is a YouTube page from the archive, on the right is an up-to—date one
Some of them are unavailable "due to complaints of trademark infringement." Recall that the developers really sued for the right to use the brand The Day Before.
Is The Day Before really one of the lowest rated games?
According to SteamDB, the game is among the top ten games with the lowest rating on Steam of all time with a rating of 18.5%. Important: the service uses its own formula for calculating the score (therefore, the score of the game is slightly higher on it than Steam shows).
The game also got into a similar top, which is called Hall of Shame. According to him, The Day Before is no longer in the top ten, but in the top three lowest rated titles by players (along with Overwatch 2 and War of the Three Kingdoms).