The garbage truck on fire that was The Day Before recently shut down for good. Following its closure, The Day Before developer Fntastic, who allegedly closed their doors in December, has just released a statement responding to the game’s poor launch and citing blogger hit jobs and an overwhelming “negative bias” as reasons for the game’s monumental crash and burn.
The statement was posted on Fntastic’s official Twitter/X account early this morning, an especially strange move given the developer’s supposed closure just last month:
⚡Recently, a lot of misinformation has emerged on the Internet from supposedly anonymous sources. Fntastic provides an official response to these statements.#fntastic #thedaybefore pic.twitter.com/zRKWQ1nfmr
— Fntastic (@FntasticHQ) January 24, 2024
The statement reads as follows:
Recently, a lot of misinformation has emerged on the Internet from supposedly anonymous sources. Fntastic provides an official response to these statements.
Anonymous people allege that we deceived players
We worked hard and honestly on the game for five years. We didn’t take a penny from users, didn’t use crowdfunding, and didn’t offer pre-orders. Even after the game was closed, we, together with the publisher, returned money to all players, including forcibly issuing refunds to those who did not request them. How many companies return money like that? We are not a fly-by-night company. We have been operating since 2015 and have always conducted our business honestly.
Anonymous people allege that we deceived the investor
This is not true. We still have a great relationship with our publisher. The closure of The Day Before did not affect our partnership. Since 2021, we’ve had a New Zealand venture called MytonaFntastic and a successful game, Propnight, which has sold almost a million copies. Propnight also co-financed the development of The Day Before.
Anonymous former employees tell different stories about the development
We’re unsure whether these employees are real or not, but we had excellent relationships with our team. Despite being a small indie company with a limited budget, we assisted employees with relocation and healthcare and helped some of them to buy equipment and with their mortgages and other personal matters. We offered an extra non-working day off each month, vacation pay, and timely salary payments, along with the option of working remotely. Our low churn rate and the fact that half of those who left returned to the company demonstrate our positive work environment. One hundred percent of the team did everything they could to make The Day Before a success.
Who made money on The Day Before?
Certain bloggers made huge money by creating false content with huge titles from the very beginning to gain views and followers, exploiting the lack of information about the game’s development. Their actions triggered a gold rush among content creators due to the game’s pre-release popularity.
Why do they say that the released game is not the same as that in the trailers, and why was the game closed?
We implemented everything shown in the trailers, from home improvements and a detailed world to off-road vehicles. We only disabled a few minor features, like parkour, due to bugs but planned to include them in the full release.
Remember the experiment where you’re asked to count pink objects in a room and then recall the blue ones? You won’t remember any. It’s all about focus. The negative bias instilled by certain bloggers making money on hate affected perceptions of the game. Look at unbiased gameplay like Dr. Disrespect’s stream at release. Despite the initial bugs and server issues, he liked the game, which we fixed later, and the game received improved reviews over the weekend. Unfortunately, the hate campaign had already inflicted significant damage.
By the way, after sales closed, many people wrote to us that bloggers had deceived them and they liked the game, and they asked for access. We also heard that petitions were created to continue development, and on the black market, the game’s price exceeded $200, and some even began to make their own mods.
We are grateful to all the senders of mails who expressed support and appealed not to give up and to continue to work. Finally, we encourage you to subscribe to our social networks to know what will happen next.
-Fntastic
This entire statement reads like a parody. Referring to key sites as “the black market” and citing a random pink-and-blue balloon experiment seems entirely bizarre when trying to reclaim your reputation. While we could normally empathize with a developer who suffered excessive negative backlash for a product as a result of a hate train, it’s a little harder to get behind a company that repeatedly demonstrated poor communication and a lack of transparency, especially when they’re insinuating a continuation of business after announcing a studio closure a month ago.
We’ll be keeping an eye on Fntastic’s social media accounts for an upcoming announcement, but we’ve learned our lesson. We’ll believe in their ability to make a great game when we see it happen.
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