The Day Before dev Fntastic closes down for obvious reasons

Earlier this month, the once-highly-anticipated The Day Before launched and quickly crashed and burned in dramatic fashion. As many had begun to suspect, the project was essentially a fake – rather than the open-world zombie MMO promised, developer Fntastic delivered a limited extraction shooter filled with cheap purchased assets and not a lot of fun. Fntastic promptly announced they were shutting their doors, and Steam delisted the game and begun offering refunds to those that asked.

This year’s most infamous video game, The Day Before , will see a timely and expected end on January 22nd, 2024. 

The Day Before, once Steam’s most wishlisted game before experiencing a bizarre journey through multiple delays, accusations of being a scam, apparent legal disputes and a catastrophic Early Access launch, will shut down its servers in one month. The effective end to the game will accompany refunds for anyone who brought it on Steam.

With developer Fntastic ceasing operations just days after The Day Before’s release, publisher MyTona has announced that servers are shutting down on January 22nd, 2024.

Game development disaster The Day Before will go dark forever on 22nd January 2024.

Update — Publisher Mytona has posted an update on The Day Before situation, pledging to work with Steam to open up refunds to any players who choose to do so.

After seeing a few of The Day Before’s gameplay trailers, one indie dev decided to make a ‘parody’ trailer of their own to see how quickly they could whip up a video that captured a similar degree of promise. But when that project began, they couldn't have known what would eventually happen to The Day Before, and how much it would fail to live up to that promise.

The Day Before, once Steam's most wish-listed open-world survival MMO, has been delisted from Valve's platform. The game launched in early access to an almost immediate flood of negative reviews last week, with most players claiming that it wasn't really an MMO but an extraction shooter reminiscent of Escape from Tarkov, combined with the post-apocalyptic threats of The Last of Us. The misleading gameplay claims were made worse by several game-breaking glitches that caused characters to clip off from the map, an incomplete and sparse world devoid of action, and inconsistent online features. Merely five days after release, the game is no longer available to buy on Steam and Fntastic, the studio behind the game, has announced it is shutting down and working on refunds for customers who bought the game.

Update, 12/12/23:

Editor’s Note: Faster than we could publish our early access review, the developer announced it was shutting down and The Day Before was removed from sale . The servers remain up for those who have bought it and not yet refunded, but since our reviewer went to the trouble of playing it, it seems only right that you should get to read what he thought of the experience while it lasted.

Update: Valve has seemingly made the move to delist The Day Before from Steam. While the game's Steam page is still up, you can no longer purchase the game. Those who purchased the game are reporting being able to receive refunds, even well beyond the usual 2-hour limit.

Fntastic, the developer behind controversial Steam Early Access launch The Day Before, has shut down with immediate effect.