The Day Before was a heavily hyped-up video game prior to its eventual launch. Fans couldn’t wait to get their hands on the title being developed under Fntastic. Various marketing materials painted the picture of a new survival MMO game for fans to connect and fight off the undead. That had quite a few fans eager to try the title out, but it was a game that continued to evade its release. Several delays pushed the game further back into the year. Then there was also the fact that after all these delays, it started to make players skeptical. Was this a game set to release, or were the developers pulling fans along with no real end game?
Well, after a series of delays, The Day Before finally hit early access. Unfortunately for the development team, fans were quick to voice frustrations. This was nothing like what fans were expecting. The survival MMO fans hoped to play was a poorly developed extraction shooter. It was only a few days after the release of this game that the development studio announced its closure. But that hasn’t stopped some fans wondering what happened behind the scenes. Fortunately, DualShockers managed to speak with a former staff member at Fntastic, who revealed that the game project was never intended to be an MMO.
According to the report, staff never considered the game an MMO and were not sure what it was even called an MMO in the first place. RPG mechanics were never intended to be implemented, and while skills were being prototyped, they were not ready for early access launch. However, nothing more was intended beyond that, as the developers were going for a game that modeled other titles like Escape from Tarkov and DayZ. It was also confirmed that going into the game development, the staff knew there wouldn’t be servers that held over a hundred players. This would make clans, raids, and other MMO features impossible.
A lot of good ideas from our team were disregarded because [Eduard and Aisen] didn’t approve them. Like voice chat. Anyone who complained too much was kicked off the team. A lot of stupid ideas were implemented, removed and re-implemented because the brothers thought they knew better than us about what people wanted. A huge amount of time and work was wasted because jobs had to be done and re-done.
Fntastic Former Developer – DualShockers
However, none of the ideas the staff had made went into production. The founders of Fntastic, Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev, were responsible for every gameplay and design decision. Any feedback given to the duo was quickly disregarded. According to the statements given to DualShockers, it was as if the founder knew better, so anyone who gave any feedback or complained too much about the game’s attributes was quickly kicked off the team.
Of course, as you all know, the game is still being reviewed terribly, and the studio is closing down. Meanwhile, statements given by the Fntastic team noted that none of the money was taken directly. Instead, it’s claimed that all money received will be sent directly to pay off their partner debts.
