4 Days After the Release of the Day Before, Its Developer Announces Their Shut Down
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Developer Fntastic announced the shutdown of their studio just days after they released their highly anticipated title The Day Before, an online extraction shooter that is currently experiencing a horrible launch on Steam’s early access.
“Today, we announce the closure of Fntastic studio. Unfortunately, The Day Before has failed financially, and we lack the funds to continue. All income received is being used to pay off debts our partners.” says the developers in the first paragraph of their short statement.
Mytona, the publisher for The Day Before, also released a statement saying that they will work with Steam to give refunds to all players who “choose to make a refund”.
In just a couple of days, The Day Before has already become one of the most negatively rated titles on Steam as of this writing the game has an ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ rating with over 19,000 user reviews. SteamDB also shows a 90% player drop just 4 days after release as it peaked at over 38,000 concurrent players on release and is now struggling to maintain a concurrent player count of 2,000.
The stem of the problem is not only the variety of bugs and server issues but also how the game was advertised at the beginning. It was originally marketed as a zombie apocalypse MMO with an impressive gameplay trailer in 2021. Sadly, its Early Access version is nowhere near what was promised as it turned out to be a barebones extraction shooter.
It’s been an unusual journey for the developers as they’ve been faced with different allegations from copying marketing from different games, a trademark dispute, and even multiple delays. It also didn’t help that the studio rarely provided updates on the game, showcasing its many systems leading up to its release. Despite the lack of transparency, it was the most wishlisted game on Steam.
Expectations were high, and they clearly didn’t deliver as i’ve never seen excitement so high drop so fast in just a matter of days.
Stellar Blade’s potential was clear, but as its ambitions expanded into something greater, it lost focus. As soon as Stellar Blade tries to bring everything together, it merges into a single figure that looks deformed and uneven. The quality is unquestionable but it wasn’t the final product I was slowly building in my head as I went through the game’s first half.