Fntastic’s The Day Before will probably go down in the gaming industry history books as one of the worst launches of an “MMO,” but wait, it never was an MMO. The game has been pulled from purchase on Steam, its developer has shut down, and refunds are allegedly being issued. The biggest problem, though, is that it no doubt had at least a few people who knew it would never be an MMO.
Ex-Fntastic staff told DualShockers that no one on the dev team saw the game as an MMO despite being heavily marketed as one. When asked why it was the two teams were speaking completely different languages with what the game was, it was pinned mostly on the co-founders — Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev — and their lack of communication. The game had no plans to implement RPG elements into the game or make it so that the players could expand the world.
It’s worse as Eduard made basically all decisions in terms of gameplay and mechanics and often disregarded suggestions from the team, like voice chat, which was noticeably omitted from its original release. Any sort of dispute between the founders and an employee — or just one that complained “too much” — ran the risk of getting fired.
This source also confirmed the leaked info that the game sold 200,000 copies with 90,000 refunded. In terms of why the studio shuttered, it’s speculated that it could’ve been Mytona’s doing. That doesn’t, however, explain the insane levels that the bigwigs are going through to conceal their involvement, with Eduard going as far as scrubbing his LinkedIn clean.