The bizarre history of The Day Before: From Steam's most-anticipated MMO to a bland survival game that killed a studio

Dec. 11, 2023

The many, many, many problems and promises since The Day Before’s reveal

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The Day Beforeappears to be officially finished. Though the immediate future of its Steam servers remains unclear,with the abrupt closure of developer Fntasticthe strange saga of The Day Before has reached an apparent end that’s simultaneously surprising and unsurprising.

Even aftera disastrous launch for the not-MMO survival gamethatonce topped Steam’s wishlist charts, I don’t think many people expected the studio to outright shut down within a week. At the same time, the entire game, from its scope to its genre to its very existence, had only become more uncertain since its reveal thanks tostrange and mounting setbacks, to the point that many peopledidexpect it to unceremoniously evaporate.

There may well have been plenty of people working hard and acting in good faith somewhere in the murky swamp of The Day Before’s development and marketing efforts. Perhaps they were among the manyvolunteers solicited by Fntastic mid-development. If there were, those people were completely obscured by bizarre videos and posts that regularly incited accusations that this was all a scam, and just as many odd statementsinsisting that no, really, it’s not a scam.

The history of The Day Before

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In the following weeks,the devs promise more gameplayfootage before itvanishes from Steamandgets a nine-month delayover an alleged trademark dispute. This triple-whammy lights a chain of fires that were never truly put out. Even The Day Before’scommunity moderators are unsure if the game is real. Fntasticreportedly tried to take control of the game’s increasingly skeptical subreddit. And to make things more confusing, the developer later contradicts itself by insisting that it wasgoing to delay the game even without that trademark dispute.

But hey,that big gameplay reveal is here, but oh no, it’s a big disappointment. Looting, crafting, and exploration seem to have dipped in quality in the past two years,inspiring little confidence among the community. It certainly doesn’t look like a game that’s anywhere near ready for prime time. To make matters worse, the trailer isaccused of ripping off Call of Duty shot-for-shot. Later in the month, the aforementioned trademark situation, which had purportedly seen videos from the game’s YouTube channel delisted, gets even messier withthe introduction of an unexpected third party: a calendar app.

A dev vlogreleased at the end of the month somehow makes things worseby conspicuously skipping over actual devs and instead retreading an enormously unpopular “Life at Fntastic” video that made the studio look like a shell company in an American Pie film.

The most accurate line in the entire post is this: “It will be Early Access on Steam since this is our first huge game, and there may be unforeseen circumstances.” Alas,the console versions of the game have been indefinitely delayed, and will now arrive alongside the full game when it leaves Early Access… which it definitely will.

What follows could certainly be described as “unforeseen circumstances,” though I’d like to think that the timeline up to this point demonstrates what was really happening here.Players report game-breaking bugs and server issues,the game gets panned like the Colorado River, and The Day Before quicklyjoins Overwatch 2 in the abyss of overwhelmingly negative Steam reviews. And withFntastic actively erasing its presence online even as I write this, and the game no longer available for purchase on Steam, that looks like the end of The Day Before.

OurThe Day Before reviewsays it best: “It has no redeeming qualities, and under no circumstances should you buy it.”

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