The bizarre history of The Day Before: From Steam's most-anticipated MMO to a bland survival game that killed a studio
The Day Before appears to be officially finished. Though the immediate future of its Steam servers remains unclear, with the abrupt closure of developer Fntastic the strange saga of The Day Before has reached an apparent end that's simultaneously surprising and unsurprising.
Even after a disastrous launch for the not-MMO survival game that once topped Steam's wishlist charts, I don't think many people expected the studio to outright shut down within a week. At the same time, the entire game, from its scope to its genre to its very existence, had only become more uncertain since its reveal thanks to strange and mounting setbacks, to the point that many people did expect it to unceremoniously evaporate.
There may well have been plenty of people working hard and acting in good faith somewhere in the murky swamp of The Day Before's development and marketing efforts. Perhaps they were among the many volunteers solicited by Fntastic mid-development. If there were, those people were completely obscured by bizarre videos and posts that regularly incited accusations that this was all a scam, and just as many odd statements insisting that no, really, it's not a scam.
It is fundamentally sad to see a studio completely wiped out by one failed project, especially smack in the middle of the holiday season. But as one of 2023's highest-profile and most destructive failures, there's a lot more to learn from The Day Before's self-induced implosion. With that in mind, let's unpack and remember the history of The Day Before, from reveal to release to resignation.
The history of The Day Before
January 2021 - The Day Before is revealed and actually looks pretty good: In one of many now-deleted videos that portrayed a much better-looking game with clear MMO elements that are largely missing from the game that was actually released, Fntastic pitched a mix of The Division and The Last of Us in a US overrun by zombies, in a trailer with – genuinely – some of the best hammy team chatter I've ever heard.
February 2021 - New gameplay promises a breakthrough for "the MMO survival genre:" In a video helpfully archived by IGN, leads from Fntastic and publisher Mytona (now jointly listed as Mytona Fantastic on Steam) hype up and showcase an open-world game that, again, looks pretty all right.
April 2021 - A 13-minute gameplay trailer doubles down on post-pandemic America: In another video still viewable via IGN, The Day Before shows off a whole lot of driving, looting, and shooting in multiplayer. Apart from the player's questionable aim, the stealth-infused presentation is still looking fairly promising.
October 2021 - The Day Before release date is set for June 21, 2022: Folks, it did not come out in June 2022. This, again, fairly good-looking environmental trailer is not doing the final game any favors nowadays.
May 2022 - The Day Before gets delayed as it jumps to Unreal Engine 5: Yeah, we didn't hear all that much for some time, and this won't be the last extended period of silence in the game's history. This time, Fntastic returned with news of a delay. The game would now launch on March 1, 2023. Fntastic insists that "the transition to a more advanced and adapted open worlds engine will make the gameplay of The Day Before even more fantastic." Welp.
June 2022 - Fntastic asks for "volunteers" to help with development: In one of the brightest early red flags, Fntastic puts itself in the hot seat by asking people to work on the game for free. Well, some people, anyway. Some "volunteers" were allegedly full time and paid a salary – those people are normally called employees, by the way – while others worked part time and received other benefits. You know, like "free codes" and "participation certificates." Like Fntastic's YouTube trailer and Discord, its website has now been cleared out, but you can still dig up archived pages for this volunteer drive.
July 2022 - The Day Before is already topping Steam's wishlists: Though the delightful cat game Stray briefly knocked The Day Before out of first place, it was already one of the most-anticipated games on Steam by this time, and even the single most-wishlisted game at several points.
January 2023 - A no-good, very bad month for The Day Before: The Day Before brings a shiny new trailer to Nvidia CES 2023, and Fntastic doesn't seem to want to show much gameplay this time. The Nvidia CES trailer sure did have ray-tracing, but it didn't have much else. A dearth of meaningful details is starting to drive even The Day Before hopefuls to question the legitimacy of the game.
In the following weeks, the devs promise more gameplay footage before it vanishes from Steam and gets a nine-month delay over an alleged trademark dispute. This triple-whammy lights a chain of fires that were never truly put out. Even The Day Before's community moderators are unsure if the game is real. Fntastic reportedly tried to take control of the game's increasingly skeptical subreddit. And to make things more confusing, the developer later contradicts itself by insisting that it was going to delay the game even without that trademark dispute.
February 2023 - Fntastic struggles with a "fraudulent" advertising scam: Folks perked up their ears when offers of early access keys to The Day Before made the rounds, but Fntastic quickly put out a statement claiming these were "fraudulent" advertisements seemingly aimed at content creators. If you wrote this narrative as a work of irony, readers would call you ham-handed for adding a part where the company struggles with scammers.
But hey, that big gameplay reveal is here, but oh no, it's a big disappointment. Looting, crafting, and exploration seem to have dipped in quality in the past two years, inspiring little confidence among the community. It certainly doesn't look like a game that's anywhere near ready for prime time. To make matters worse, the trailer is accused of ripping off Call of Duty shot-for-shot. Later in the month, the aforementioned trademark situation, which had purportedly seen videos from the game's YouTube channel delisted, gets even messier with the introduction of an unexpected third party: a calendar app.
A dev vlog released at the end of the month somehow makes things worse by conspicuously skipping over actual devs and instead retreading an enormously unpopular "Life at Fntastic" video that made the studio look like a shell company in an American Pie film.
April 2023 - The Day Before resurfaces with a beta and a promise to return to Steam: Finally, a hands-on opportunity. Surely this will assuage the confusion. (It did not.)
June 2023 - Still leaning into the MMO bit, Fntastic devs promise jobs and a customizable house: Studio co-founders Eduard and Aisen Gotostev talk up PvP battles in one breath and player housing in the next. They promise jobs, houses, and saunas which "add to the depth of our game world, reinforcing the sense of a lived-in, vibrant community."
August 2023 - I can't believe I'm saying this, but we might have a new trademark issue: In the apparent joining of Mytona and Fntastic, the two seemingly step on the toes of the Dayworld novels trademark. You really can't make this stuff up.
October 2023 - Fntastic breaks months of silence with a tease for a final launch trailer: The game is still missing from Steam at this point, and there's also been no word about the beta mentioned in April. We're getting close to the repeatedly delayed launch and the clock is a'-tickin'.
November 2023 - The Day Before "won back" its name and will hit Early Access soon: It is now the month before The Day Before. In the first post to its newly re-minted Steam page, Fntastic says: "We dedicate this victory to all our future players, and it's all for them. For five years, we have been doing our best to give people this dream game. We also want to thank our volunteers for their constant support and faith in us."
The most accurate line in the entire post is this: "It will be Early Access on Steam since this is our first huge game, and there may be unforeseen circumstances." Alas, the console versions of the game have been indefinitely delayed, and will now arrive alongside the full game when it leaves Early Access... which it definitely will.
December 2023 - The Day Before devs send one last message to the doubters: In a show of diplomacy, Fntastic says it holds no ill will toward the people who, for some reason, didn't think the game was legitimate. "We made this game for you too," the studio tells the people "who didn't believe."
What follows could certainly be described as "unforeseen circumstances," though I'd like to think that the timeline up to this point demonstrates what was really happening here. Players report game-breaking bugs and server issues, the game gets panned like the Colorado River, and The Day Before quickly joins Overwatch 2 in the abyss of overwhelmingly negative Steam reviews. And with Fntastic actively erasing its presence online even as I write this, and the game no longer available for purchase on Steam, that looks like the end of The Day Before.
Our The Day Before review says it best: "It has no redeeming qualities, and under no circumstances should you buy it."
