How The Day Before went from Steam darling to disaster
The Day Before went from one of the most anticipated games on Steam to an unqualified disaster. After spending months at the top of the platform’s most wishlisted list, the game’s release on Dec. 7 quickly led to a wave of immense blowback, tens of thousands of players seeking refunds, and the closure of the studio behind it.
Just four days after launching on Steam, The Day Before developer Fntastic announced that its game was a “failure financially” and that no more updates would be released for the early access title. Fntastic, saying it lacked the funds to continue, was closing. The studio then wiped its YouTube channel, deleting all official uploads of The Day Before gameplay trailers; its CEO has disappeared from social media; and the game itself has been pulled from sale on Steam. The game’s publisher, Mytona, said on social media that it’s working with Valve to provide refunds.
The sequence of events, and Fntastic’s promises about what The Day Before would be, have led many players and purchasers of the game to call it a “scam.” Polygon has reached out to Fntastic, its CEO, and publisher Mytona, as well as Valve, for comment on The Day Before’s launch and removal from Steam, but all parties have refused to respond so far.
To recap the events leading up to The Day Before’s disastrous launch, we have to go back much further.
Developer Fntastic was founded in 2015 and released its first game, “eerie survival adventure” The Wild Eight, two years later. Back then, the small independent studio went by the name Eight Points and used Kickstarter to fund development of its first game. Eduard Gotovtsev, lead developer of The Wild Eight, co-founded Fntastic with his brother Aisen Gotovtsev. Fntastic would go on to release
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