The Day Before Saga Is Finally Over – Get Your Refund Now

The Day Before Final Trailer - YouTube - 0-2-17

The story behind The Day Before has to be one of the weirdest stories in video games in recent history. After a year of strange developments and doubts cast over even the basic existence of the game, developer Fntastic has announced one last twist in the story: it’s shutting down forever.

But first, a little bit of background. The Day Before was announced last year – or maybe it was earlier, who honestly knows at this point – and quickly became one of the most wishlisted games on Steam. The trailer was flashy and showed off a lot of fancy visuals, so I guess people were really keen on a good-looking game. Fntastic said the game was a post-apocalyptic survival MMO, and various pieces of marketing suggested it would be genre-defining.

Then, in January 2023, the game’s Steam page disappeared overnight. The developer claimed it was due to a trademark dispute, and delayed the game indefinitely because of this. This didn’t make a whole lot of sense, since it could have just changed the name and launched anyway, but that was the line Fntastic was sticking with.

Until it wasn’t. The developer was faced with claims that The Day Before wasn’t real, including claims from the game’s Discord moderator that nobody had ever seen real gameplay for it. In response, Fntastic said the game was very much real, and that the delay was actually planned before the trademark issue arose. It was delayed to November 10, and a gameplay video was released that did not help convince people that it was real in the slightest.

I wish I could say that everyone was wrong, the game was released on November 10, and was an absolute banger. It wasn’t. The Day Before got another last-second delay a week before the release date, and subsequently dated for December 7. As you can see, we’re rapidly approaching that point in the timeline, and that’s where things really blow up.

On December 7, 2023, The Day Before was released in early access on Steam. It was not an MMO. It was very poorly rated by owners of the game. And now, it’s gone, probably forever. Fntastic is pulling the plug on the game, and calling it quits altogether.

In an official statement on Twitter, Fntastic said that the game had “failed financially” and that the studio did not have enough money to continue developing it.

“We invested all of our efforts, resources, and man-hours into the development of The Day Before, which was our first huge game,” the statement reads, “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.”

Fntastic goes on to say that the future of The Day Before is “unknown,” but that the servers for the game will remain operational going forward, which I personally doubt but am happy to be proven wrong on. In a later statement on Twitter, Fntastic said that it was working with publisher Mytona and Steam to allow refunds “for any player who chooses to request one, regardless of game time.”

In a much less official statement on Twitter, Fntastic responded to an upset fan by saying “s**t happens.”

And if that doesn’t sum up this whole mess, I don’t know what else will.

Related: How To Refund Games On Steam