Fntastic studio commented on the scandal surrounding The Day Before: after the disastrous release of the game, the developers were accused of fraud and criticized for not fulfilling their promises.
The Day Before
In its response, Fntastic stated that it had implemented everything shown in the trailers in The Day Before, except for a number of small functions like parkour, but it was planned to add it after fixing bugs. The studio believes that bloggers who scolded the game for the sake of attracting attention are to blame for the poor reception of the game.
"Try this experiment: go into a room and find all the pink objects, and then try to remember how many blue objects there were. It is unlikely that you will remember at least one. It's all about the focus of attention and negative settings suggested by some bloggers even before the release," Fntastic said in a statement.
"On The Day Before, certain bloggers earned money, who from the very beginning created unreliable loud content in order to gain views and subscribers, which allowed them to effectively monetize their channels. [...] The super—popularity of the game before its release actually provoked a real gold rush among such people," Fntastic wrote.
Fntastic emphasized that The Day Before was done without attracting money from the players. In particular, she did not open pre-orders. After the game was closed, all customers received a refund. The money was returned even to those who refused the refund.
In its statement, the studio also mentioned rumors that it had deceived investors who allegedly lost all the money invested in the game. Fntastic indicated that it is still in a "great relationship" with the publisher MYTONA, and the failure of The Day Before did not spoil them. I also remembered Fntastic about the stories of anonymous employees about the unfavorable situation in the studio. The company does not exclude that journalists invented them.
The Day Before was released on December 7, 2023 in early access format and almost immediately became one of the lowest-rated games in Steam history. Players unhappy with the fact that they received an escape shooter in the spirit of Escape from Tarkov instead of the promised open-world MMO, left thousands of negative reviews. A few days later, The Day Before was withdrawn from sale.
Full text of the Fntastic statement