Dev Fantastic Faces Abrupt Closure: Shuts Down Merely Days After Early Access Premiere

“Fntastic, Creator of The Day Before, Shuts Down Only Four Days After Early Access Launch! The fate of The Day Before’s future and the anticipated 2021 release, Propnight, hangs in uncertainty. Despite the studio’s closure, The Day Before servers will continue to operate. Fntastic, born in 2015 with its debut The Wild Eight in 2017, faces an unexpected turn of events.”

Here is Fntastic’s statement on its closing, in full: 

“Today, we announce the closure of Fntastic studio. Unfortunately, The Day Before has failed financially, and we lack the funds to continue. All income received is being used to pay off debts to our partners. We invested all our efforts, resources, and man-hours into the development of The Day Before, which was our first huge game. We really wanted to release new patches to reveal the full potential of the game, but unfortunately, we don’t have the funding to continue the work. 

“It’s important to note that we didn’t take any money from the public during the development of The Day Before; there were no pre-orders or crowdfunding campaigns. We worked tirelessly for five years, pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into the game. At the moment, the future of The Day Before and Propnight is unknown, but the servers will remain operational. We apologize if we didn’t meet your expectations. We did everything within our power, but unfortunately, we miscalculated our capabilities. Creating games is an incredibly challenging endeavor.” 

The statement also lists its schedule of releases over the years, as you can see above. 

The Day Before launched into Early Access last week, on December 7. As reported by IGN, the game peaked at 38,104 concurrent users at launch on Steam but today, that number is down to 4,197 players, according to SteamDB. In those four days, The Day Before also received enough negative reviews from players to place it into the 10 worst-reviewed games on Steam. 

Over the years, The Day Before has been the subject of controversy, ranging from requests for volunteer work, various delays, broken promises, and more. Oddly, Fntastic has scrubbed its entire YouTube channel, leaving the following note as its channel’s description: “We’re grateful to everyone who supported us during these difficult years. It’s been a fantastic journey over the past eight years.”