"S**t happens" - The Day Before dev shuts down, game removed from sale

Fntastic, the developer of The Day Before, has officially shutdown just three days after the game's release into Steam Early Access. Although the launch had all the hallmarks of a disaster, the manner in which things unfolded is what's interesting, especially given how quickly it all happened.

After The Day Before launched and it became clear that it bears little similarity to its 2021 reveal, players quickly started picking apart every statement made by the developer, dissecting all previously released trailers (most of which vanished from official channels), and even peruse all the assets featured in the game itself.

Following the chaos of launch, The Day Before's Steam review rating settled at Overwhelmingly Negative. The game was being made fun of on YouTube, Reddit and elsewhere for what ended up being something completely different from the zombie survival MMO pitched in 2021.

Fntastic announced on Twitter that it's shutting down, claiming that the game had failed financially, and the studio no longer has enough money to continue development. The statement said that servers for the game, as well as the studio's previous title, Propnight, will remain online for the foreseeable.

"We invested all our efforts, resources, and man-hours into the development of The Day Before, which was our first huge game," the statement reads. "We really wanted to released new patches to reveal the full potential of the game, but unfortunately, we don't have any funding to continue the work."

That continued emphasis on The Day Before being the studio's first big project is something Fntastic have used in the past to justify the game falling quite short of the initial reveals. It's also one the developer used again in a flippant response to a tweet from one frustrated player.

"This was our first big experience. S**t happens," the developer wrote. Since then, the game was pulled from sale entirely on Steam, with the most recent news update confirming that anyone who requests a refund will be granted one, which the developer later said will be granted regardless of game time.

If you're after a bit of drama, Reddit user EpicStory1989 put together a massive post that not only compares the 2021 trailers with the release build - documenting every feature that was shown then and never made it into the game, it also lists all the Unreal Engine store assets used in the game.

Interestingly, some of those assets did not exist before October, 2022, which certainly shoots some holes into Fntastic's claims that the game had been in development for five years. This should hoopefully be the end of this particular story.