The Day Before developer Fntastic has announced its closure mere days after the zombie game’s hotly anticipated launch into Steam early access, citing the new release’s financial failure and the studio’s lack of funds to continue on. Fntastic opened its doors in 2015 and launched several games, including Propnight.
The Day Before released on December 7 to ‘Mostly Negative’ Steam reviews, with the primary pain points being bugs, empty maps, and frustrations around it resembling an extraction shooter more than an MMO.
“The Day Before has failed financially, and we lack the funds to continue. All income received is being used to pay off debts to our partners,” says Fntastic in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).
“We invested all our efforts, resources, and man-hours into the development of The Day Before, which was our first huge game. We really wanted to release new patches to reveal the full potential of the game, but unfortunately, we don’t have the funding to continue the work.
“It’s important to note that we didn’t take any money from the public during the development of The Day Before; there were no pre-orders or crowdfunding campaigns. We worked tirelessly for five years, pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into the game.”
Fntastic goes on to say that the future of both The Day Before and Propnight “is unknown.” The servers for both games will remain online, but you can no longer purchase The Day Before.
Fntastic also apologizes “if we didn’t meet your expectations,” saying the team “did everything within our power, but unfortunately, we miscalculated our capabilities.”
Today’s news follows several days of chaos on the game’s Discord, causing one volunteer mod to claim they’d been “thrown under the bus” by Fntastic, whom they say they hadn’t had contact with since the controversy-filled launch.
The Day Before peaked at 38k players on Steam, though has since lost around 75% of those concurrents. Fntastic was also spotted removing tags related to MMOs on the game’s Steam page after complaints about it being surprisingly light on MMO features. We’ve also already seen a first attempt at a The Day Before ‘remake’ project.
Fntastic has now privated all videos on its official YouTube channel, including The Day Before’s launch trailer.