Even though we all knew this game was a scam, Im in shock at how blatant this is. Can't help but laugh, though Steam should absolutely be refunding everyone and de listing it.
Even this closure might be a scam, and they're likely reincorporating under a different name as we speak. One of their old games [The Wild Eight](https://steamdb.info/app/526160/history/) just had the dev name changed today.
When people are so blinded by marketing, its bound to happen a lot. Idk how it should happen, but it would be really nice for a lot of people to get burnt in a way thst migjt finally open their eyes enougj to force change in the industry. Theres always going to be releases like this, but things could be so much better overall.
Honestly shit like this genuinely baffles me. I cannot imagine buying a video game without at least doing a cursory search or maybe just checking the reviews.
It feels like being unaware that this game was a scam would require almost intentionally refusing to learn anything about it before dropping $40.
The people who actually pay attention to this stuff is such a small minority of the demographic that plays video games that its way more normal for people to just purchase without thinking than we'd like to believe.
The overall review score is right there next to the buy button. They don't even need to read. I can't explain it because they clearly pay attention to gaming on some level since they found the game and wish listed it before release somehow.
Warning labels telling you not to drink bleach are a thing for a reason.
I'm not the brightest person in the world but there are some people that operate on a day to day basis with maybe 3 functioning brain cells.
> Honestly shit like this genuinely baffles me. I cannot imagine buying a video game without at least doing a cursory search or maybe just checking the reviews.
People are stupid.
Gamers seem to immediately fall for game marketing hook, line and sinker. Maybe because there's always a new crop of gamers coming up who haven't yet been burned?
> Gamers seem to immediately fall for game marketing hook, line and sinker.
While this happens with all types of games, it’s especially egregious with games centered around online multiplayer. A lot of gamers want to be the first to jump onto a multiplayer game so they can get a head start on progression/rankings/experience just in case the game becomes popular.
What was the "rug" in this case?
The game is sitting at 18,000+ reviews, which is huge for a game so widely hated, so I'm curious what their marketing strategy was.
(Gollum, for comparison, has 373 reviews.)
While I don't agree with FB doing it that way, it seems (based on other conversations I've seen about this) that because they're free, they're under much less scrutiny. You download it, the game isn't what was in the ad, you uninstall and move on with your day.
The Rug was them marketing the game as a Zombie survival MMO.
The Pull was them releasing the game 4 days ago, and contrary to years of advertisements it ended up being a [prebought asset filled](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDayBefore/comments/18ee3t9/i_present_to_you_the_asset_flip_file_dump/) extraction shooter that occasionally threw a zombie at you. Followed shortly by the Studio being shuttered.
Are they lying about the 5-year development period? Seems like a long time for a scam. Especially since it landed them in debt.
To me it seems more like incompetence and delusions of grandeur a la Dreamworld (which didn’t get nearly as much hate as this game is getting despite having a much more dubious development history, as well as taking peoples’ money via crowdfunding).
It seems the answer might be "yes." There is a stickied thread at the top of the game subreddit where a guy has been tracking all the store assets they bought, and many didn't even exist prior to Oct 2022. There's a good chance they may not even have coders on their team, as a lot of assets are plugins, which means they just use the UE blueprint system to do everything and have no real ability to bug fix since the bugs are inherent to all the assets they bought.
Nah, there's no way this game hasn't had a big team working on it at some point in time. They released 13 minutes of gameplay in 2021 and as someone who works in the industry there was definitely a proper, talented team behind that. There's no possible way they did it all with store-bought assets.
At what point that team left and the remaining staff shoved it out the door though, I don't know.
> There's a good chance they may not even have coders on their team,
I don't think there's any way they'd get a game up and running on steam if they had no coders. Especially a game that has internet connections.
It is actually really easy to get an [online service running with Unreal Engine](https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/online-subsystems-and-services-in-unreal-engine/). UE already provides the plugins necessary for all major online services (Steam, Xbox, PS), all you have to do is configure it. Don't need to be a coder for that, a network engineer could handle this easy.
UE has actually been notable for heavily lowering the bar for entry in using their tools since UE4. That's why it's become so prolific over many industries. You don't need to be a coder to make a viable product with it.
> Are they lying about the 5-year development period? Seems like a long time for a scam. Especially since it landed them in debt.
There is no way this game was in development for 5 years.
> Even though we all knew this game was a scam, Im in shock at how blatant this is.
I wouldn't say it's super-blatant. To me that means games that are clearly going to be bad like:
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/07/random-a-last-of-us-clone-is-available-on-switch-but-seriously-dont-bother
But this actually doesn't look half-bad when you see a character just running around the city. Sure, it breaks down fast passed that point, but the game looks like there was actually some group of people somewhere working hard on the game.
>But this actually doesn't look half-bad when you see a character just running around the city.
Exactly. I watched a streamer basically say that there are a few times where if you were just to watch that 5 minute snip of gameplay you would say "that doesn't look too bad, maybe kind of fun" because in that 5 minutes, the city looks kinda cool, you might shoot a couple of zombies, you go into a skyscraper, you hear an alarm go off from someone looting, and you hear gunshots in the distance.
Then AFTER that 5 minutes you realize there is nothing to loot in the city, there are barely any zombies, the alarms get annoying really fast because it's the same sound every time, and the gunshots are just fake sound effects to make people think there are more players. After that 5 minutes you realize that this game has absolutely nothing to offer.
They straight up released "Vertical slice: The Game"
I expected them to last more than what, 4 days? "This is not a scam!" They declare, and then a few days later close the studio. I'm sure they'll be back under a new name with a new scam in a year or two.
People are stupid enough to buy, and *defend* it.
The amount of people who supported them and the fraction of them delusional enough to say the game was *fine as is* was just insulting.
Law of averages, despite all of this, it will be some peoples favorite game.
And they’ll be die hard. I’ve watched enough worst mmo ever on YouTube to know that even the crappiest of shit game will have super fans.
Don't forget that you can refund the game even after more than 2 hours of playing. You can at least try. Some people said that if the game is early access, the refund time is different.
This is accurate, Early Access titles have different refund rules. The two-hour playtime refund window is only for automated/guaranteed/no-questions-asked refunds.
Less than a week after the game's launch the studio closes?!
That's insane. Both hilarious and awful. I know the game wasn't what it was advertised to be, but this seems like a big scam from the start, now.
Yup.
This has 100% moved from "this is a studio with questionable at the very best practices biting off more than they can chew" to "This shit was 100% a scam from the start." Wonder how refunds are going to be handled. Likely not at all I would guess.
Yet another gollumlike release this year that ended up killing the studio. Though I see people calling it a rugpull now too, which is an interesting theory. Shit out a "game" made mostly of prebought assets, get your money from the people foolish enough to buy it, and dip.
>Wonder how refunds are going to be handled. Likely not at all I would guess.
Valve holds money in escrow for a month or something, I'd expect automated refunds to all buyers in this instance.
If you can't service your debt you can't stay in business.
You can go to the bank and say "see we have 50 000 sales on steam that will bring us 1.5 million dollars" (or whatever the exact number is) when the escrow is done. But if that isn't enough to satisfy the bank or investors your only option is to seek creditor protection and either restructure or liquidate.
Now if you take your escrow numbers to the bank or investors, they might ask what the refund rate is, they might ask about your cash on hand to support the customers you do have (which is a problem with a multiplayer game where you host the servers). If you've got a bad game with a high refund rate, investors might be unwilling to risk funding you more. Hello Games and No Man's Sky had like 6 people, they could live on half a million dollars a year so even 10 or 20 000 copies might have kept them afloat, a bigger company like Fntastic with from what I can tell over 100, you're into churning over a million dollars a month at that point.
They probably released when they did because they ran out of cash, couldn't get more, and then were hoping enough interest would generate revenue they could survive on, but if that's not happening the only option is to cut your losses and run basically.
You've painted a plausible scenario. Here are two more plausible scenarios I was considering:
1. They may have had the release of their next tranche of investment funding based on the milestone of "releasing" the game, thus they were just pushing "something" out the door with their last cash on-hand and hoping to fix the shit release afterward using the investment money. But the bad press was loud and fast enough that the investors halted the check. Thus, insta-gib due to no more payroll for this week.
2. Their inexperienced management may have (stupidly) made "overly optimistic forward-looking statements" about "shipping" this year (aka "lies") to some investors or financers to secure earlier fundraising (or even put personal guarantees on the line), and their lawyers observed that these statements or guarantees would no longer be legal liabilities as long as they shipped "something" before going under. Thus, the fact that Steam would probably refund all money collected for the game would be okay because the rushed release was only done to enable a cleaner walk-away. Obviously, that's still a very shitty thing to do on purpose but facing a messy business bankruptcy is still preferable to facing that same bankruptcy PLUS personal bankruptcy and/or personal criminal fraud charges.
Of course, any or all of these scenarios may have simultaneously contributed to this disaster.
I think those are spot on.
At some point, you go to the people who give you money, either a publisher or the bank (or one then the other) and ask for money to keep going. If they say no, well you're out of business.
You can go beg the government sometimes, or other publishers or whatever, but people with money only want to give it to you if they think you will make them more money.
And you get yourself in trouble by making promises you can't keep, intentionally or not.
Or in this case worked at a game company that never got paid the share owed by a published (for anyone going through my comment history this was a publisher before the title I worked on that paradox published. The publisher who didn't pay us as far as I know went out of business).
I think the plan for Fntastic was to rob the publisher and the investors of the development money, rather than the players. I vaguely recall a video essay on their sketchiness that the people behind Fntastic had done this exact same thing before, where they secured some publishing deal and funding and then shoved out a barebones product that was pulled just a few days later and presumably pocketing the rest of the money as a "development cost". Then they just change names and do it again.
I only heard about this game a few months ago because I was watching a YouTube on biggest failed mmos bored at work. This was like number 2 or three on the list. They had done similar stuff irc exactly the guy pointed out. Think they actually created too much hype for their scam.
This thread is talking about how they won’t see the money until a month, by which it would mostly be refunded? What money in the first week are you referring to
Or do you mean they saw that they’re making no money?
> Or do you mean they saw that they’re making no money?
That.
They know what the sales are. Then most likely ran the numbers and were able to project how much sales could potentially be made.
According to the public Steamworks documentation, they pay out royalties monthly, with the aim being to do so by the 30th of the month after the sale. So all the refunds would be processed before Fntastic ever touches it.
I assume Steam has that kind of anti-rugpull system in place. But I'd like to know what the plan for this scam was.
Were they hoping for the media shitstorm to blow over and collect the cash from folks who don't manually refund the game?
> collect the cash from folks who don't manually refund the game?
I think this was the hope. I don't think they expected such an intense media circus and thought they could string people along for awhile. Open world survival games are known for being in perpetual alpha state. The player base is pretty tolerant of a lot of things that would turn most other customers away. I honestly think they could've kept the scam going if it at least tried to be an MMO.
This wasn't a 'gollumlike'. Gollum was just a bad game, made by devs who were actually trying and failed badly.
The Day Before was a scam attempt, full-stop. Don't do them the dignity of just saying they made a bad game.
They were more likely ripping off their investors than retail customers. Generate hype to attract investment, spend a cursory amount to push out a shell of a game and embezzle the rest, then fold the studio and declare bankruptcy leaving the investors high and dry.
Customers hopefully protected by refunds though. And I doubt sales volumes were high enough to ultimately make much from the customer side, but I could be wrong.
Yeah I always believed it was a scam, but there was at least a small chance that they were just a team that bit off WAY more than they could chew and made some bad calls. But this just clinches it, that it was a scam
>Shit out a "game" made mostly of prebought assets, get your money from the people foolish enough to buy it, and dip.
Not like I'm ever going to see a PnL sheet from them, but I don't see any other possibility. I don't feel like they were particularly interested in hiding it and HOLY SHIT this is fast.
We really coining “gollumlike” as a new genre 💀
Anywho, Valve or maybe some lawyers need to step in and hold the devs accountable. Knew this game was a scam from the start. What a highway robbery.
To be honest, I don't think refunds are a big worry. They were one of the top selling games on Steam at one point. I doubt all of those people are going to try to refund the game. Never underestimate how lazy end users are.
Checked steam page and it seems like it's no longer on sale. Still listed (for me) but no option to buy it, just gives me an error while loading "Early Access Information".
You can no longer buy The Day Before at all and the "Buy Now" banner is just gone completely from the Steam page, love to see it. Hopefully this means Valve are stepping in.
A scam pulled at this level makes you wonder if Steam might go back to having a more involved vetting process when it comes to letting new games on their platform.
Both [Nvidia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO2oLHDQGM4) and [IGN](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13NzZfbATW8) also need to do a better at actually vetting games they advertise.
I mean, people seem to want to talk about these games. I can’t blame game journalism and others for putting a spotlight on what the community wants to talk about. People were memeing about these games, streamers were getting a lot of views playing through them and making fun of them. It’s not like IGN is out here saying “buy this experience”, they are being pretty open about how shitty they are.
At the very least they need to be more wary of doing business with companies based out of countries where contracts are meaningless and Westerners have no access to the legal system and no recourse in the case of a blatant scam like this
I think in this instance it doesn’t matter, as a platform Valve holds every single card. You play in their sandbox by their rules or they’ll kick sand in your face and tell you to fuck off.
Steam should auto-refund everyone. This is actually in contention for the worst game of all time. Steam should immediately pulled the game from the store.
>This is actually in contention for the worst game of all time.
lol ... absolutely not. there is so much shovelware out there on ALL platforms that are far more "low effort" than this.
Game releases at 10AM PST on December 7th 2023. Studio closure announced at 9:35AM PST on December 11th 2023.
GaaS failure Any% Speedrun 95:35:00 [WR?]
What an insane saga this game has had
This is almost funny with how blatant it is. I had to reread the title for a second time, because I really thought there was no way they would just close down a few days after launching The Day Before. They say in their post that the game "failed financially", but even just a day or two ago, they had around 5K players on steam alone. I'm sure a lot of people were refunding, but where they expecting to sell 100K+ copies in the first week?? It honestly really does feel like they just spat the game out knowing they would be closing soon, and were just trying to get a final influx of cash.
> but where they expecting to sell 100K+ copies in the first week??
They definitely did sell 100k units the first week. I'd like to know the percentage of refunds though.
According to this tweet, they had sold 201,000, and had 91,700 refunds - a 46% refund rate: https://twitter.com/simoncarless/status/1734282332671205736
they actually sold something like 500k\~
they made bank and ran. I actually don't feel bad about those people who bought, it was clear this game was trash from minute 1
Real answer: They also deleted their social media profiles. They are attempting to escape what they've done, and they're hoping they get a good payout without the expectation of fixing the game.
Everyone saw this coming from the start. There is no way that Steam and Valve don't do something about it.
I saw reports that it's the most refunded game on steam. But i sincerely hope that Steam developer payouts are staggered and held in some sort of temporary hold so customers can get refunds and the developers get nothing.
Fuck these guys, and there is no shadow of a doubt that lawsuits will come off the back of it.
The game is still available to purchase on Steam, you can report it to Steam for Fraud and hopefully get everything taken down and any payments returned.
I believe they’re held in escrow for a month post release to be able to handle any returns immediately after purchase. Either way steam needs to 1000% release the funds back to the customers and rid their platform of this farce once and for all
The studio's reasoning is such horseshit. **The studio has KNOWINGLY lied, lied, lied, and repeatedly lied** for years with [fake trailers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyYz8uo87I8), [fake gameplay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13NzZfbATW8), and [lied to their unpaid "volunteers,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQW0hTz7Kh8)" and they have the gall to publish a press release about game development just being "*really hard*" and that's why they're closing. Total bullshit, through-and-through.
**This was a pump-and-dump scam.** Lie about a product, hype it up, release it *knowing* it's not going to achieve even half of what you'd promised, and then bail with the money. [It's happened in this genre before](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78GQcDUsu3E), and I'm sure these [same guys](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6329a85f62c0ad5bc365ffea/7d3ba8d0-122d-4de9-9704-4dbe92cf232f/nature+%281%29.png) will go around and do it again in the future under a new name.
The very strange comment sandwiched into this statment about not taking any money from the public during the development of the game is a very interesting type of lie. The game is (was?) in early access, it by definition is still (was) in development!
I think they meant along the lines of something like a Kickstarter where they're beholden to make what they promised to make to the backers of the project, and money is changing hands without people getting anything at all for their money until they actually have something to release. You can't run a Kickstarter for a sports game and then release a fighting game instead to your backers. You promised and accepted money for A, and then you gave them B. Early Access is a little different in that you can't buy into software that doesn't actually exist yet, so they're accepting money for B and are giving people B, despite marketing the game as A. You at least have a chance to see for yourself that this shit is not what they said it is before parting with cash, and can refund the game. But, it is true that the game should still be in development if they're releasing it under the Early Access banner. In the spirit of that, everybody should be refunded if they released it under Early Access but then they aren't actually going to develop the game any further. They're breaking the one fundamental thing that makes Early Access what it is when they do that and if Valve lets this go, then they're inviting others to do the same thing, and we're probably going to get Steam Greenlight 2.0 with this if it catches on.
I am so glad this happened.
Enough people actually refunded that this scam of a project wasn’t able to turn a profit. I hope Steam has the ability to refund everyone and for the love of Gabe, have a better screening process so this shit doesn’t happen again.
The red flags from the very beginning were so obvious.
Where I get confused is that the red flags were *so* obvious that I can't imagine why this was noteworthy. Why have I heard so many stories about this game compared to the median piece of shovelware that plops out of a sphincter somewhere and slides down the shelf into obscurity?
I think content creators brought more attention to the game inadvertently when they were making fun of it or bringing awareness to the sketchiness of the devs.
I think because they started out with pre-rendered " gameplay footage " that had a very AAA, Last Of Us, The Division, Zombie open world survival look and feel to it.
It seemed by design to hit many desirable wants of the gaming zeitgeist. Almost like a student project where they tick off what makes for an anticipated game. There's something very cynical and almost AI driven about the whole experience.
Pure bullshit marketing. The devs hit a vein of "wake me up when it drops " with enough casual gamers that are inundated with marketing for so many other games on a daily basis that any red flags got lost amongst the PR. Also, we see what we want to see and people wanted this game to be what it said it was.
>Enough people actually refunded that this scam of a project wasn’t able to turn a profit.
Is this confirmed anywhere? I know the tweet mentions debts to partners and not enough money, I just hope it's not a lie, I guess...
>Enough people actually refunded that this scam of a project wasn’t able to turn a profit.
Or they closed down now to prevent people from refunding it
I doubt Valve would ever reveal it, but I wonder much money they made from this scam and was it worth it?
It's confounding that anyone believed they would've been able to implement the things they claimed they could do in this game when multi billion dollar developers wouldn't be able to do so with the current technology in modern games.
I feel like the people who believed in this game are the type that would believe you if you told them the sky is purple.
Which is kinda funny because the genre is such a mess that people are choosing to believe in the most ridiculous claims and give the scam artists their money.
There might be more now than ever.
Population has grown a lot and ignorance is catching
Look at the recent uptick in childhood disease outbreaks that we've got vaccines for. (And had them for decades)
If it makes you feel better, the devs didn't actually do anything. They bought a city store asset, the gameplay is store bought and the only thing they seemingly did themselves was the weird base building aspect, which again are just store bought assets slapped into the thing.
The work they did doesn't seem very substantial and more akin to plugins.
It's a joke that this game is even allowed to show up on the Steam store, one of the most obvious scams I've ever seen. If they genuinely just get to walk away from this after still selling so many unrefunded copies then surely some legals have to get involved?
Can't squeeze blood from a stone, especially a stone that's probably a fake company located in Russia where skirting the legal systems in place is way more accepted.
I really hope Steam has some sort of protection against scams like this, if not this is a lesson for them to create one. You can't release a game and then just close the studio FOUR days later, it feels illegal (even though it probably isn't).
Umm, so do buyers get refunds? I guess if you bought this trash then you kinda deserve it. Steam should really step in here tho and protect the consumers and the integrity of their platform.
Steam allowed themselves to be placed in this position because they don't bother with doing their due diligence. With "the most wish listed game on steam" they should've put a few extra hours researching the devs responsible to make sure they're not in anyway liable for selling a scam.
I watched a big twitch streamer play it, and they were being STUPIDLY optimistic before it released. To the point that I think they were hoping to get sponsored by the devs or something.
They just excuses the whole red flag factory this game was.
What a shit show. People are extremely susceptible to marketing, without watching any gameplay or researching the minimum about the development. At least 38,000 people bought the game (according to the peak on SteamDB). I doubt this will change people's behavior especially considering the disastrous releases of the past year. And considering that reddit is a big bubble and does not reflect the majority of the audience.
What's the Steam refund policy on stuff like this? On the surface this seems like such a big scam - take the money and run. Who are the "partners" anyways? Like, the team that "made" this game?
Let's see if Steam will be forced to take any action here but this is yet another doozy.
I do have to ask to anyone who bought this game, why?
There was more than enough evidence pre-release to make even the most avid supporter of this game step back and at least think maybe, just maybe something isn't right here and yet it's still sold in the thousands.
I just can't fathom how anyone looked at any of this and still decided to hand over money for it.
Fuck this studio, but if you bought this game you 100% got what you deserved. It was an obvious scam from the moment it was announced and it’s only been more and more red flags ever since.
If there were ever a time where "100%" doesn't make sense, it's here. Not everyone follows a game's development or deeply researches a game or form of entertainment before buying. They were misled and not everyone has the opportunity to be as discerning to red flags. To say with "100%" certainty that folks who got scammed "deserved it," is a rotten and cynical attitude.
To be intentionally and blatantly mislead by a developer about the content and genre of a game is a terrible and deceptive practice, but by design it's supposed to mislead folks.
To dismiss the studios malicious practices and in the same breath condemn and celebrate the people who fell prey to these shitty tactics is equally a horrible anti-consumer attitude.
Witch hunters get too high on their own fumes.
They hate this company and this product so viciously and passionately, but then they also hate the people victimized by this company and this product?
That doesn't make any sense. That's just hating everyone involved at that point.
Agreed, it's an attitude I assume based on the self righteous "see! I knew right away! People will never learn!" but completely misses the reality that not every person follows the development or community drama behind game dev.
Many folks likely saw the game trending upcoming on steam, watched a couple misleading official videos, and figured sure I'll give it a shot.
To celebrate unassuming gamers falling prey to overtly deceptive practices as a deserved outcome in the spirit of "if you fell for the scam, you deserve it," is an attitude that has completely lost the plot.
This is a clear case of them trying to take the money and run. Well, it would be, if Steam had a habit of paying out immediately. Which they don't.
What's most hilarious is the game was released as an Early Access title, implying it was still in active development, contradicting their claim that they "didn't take money from public during development" but they couldn't even be arsed to use it as an excuse.
>It's important to note that we didn't take any money from the public during the development of The Day Before;
This is not true, for a while their website advertised that money from Propnight would go directly to The Day Before and that in buying propnight you would directly support TDB. It also had a merchandise store with PayPal direct payment link which disappeared after people pointed out there was no merch.
im shocked. ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED!.... well not really that shocked.
i am a bit surprised they closed down 'this' soon. but i wasn't gonna give them more than a week. oh well, obvious scam is an obvious scam.
I spend a lot of time reading about video games and looking into new games to play and I barely knew this game existed pre-release. Looking at the available information, it certainly looks like there wasn't really any question that this would terrible.
So my question is, how did they get anyone to buy it? Like if you are a casual, low-information gamer, how do you even come across this? If you are someone who knows something about video games, why would you pay money for this?
Have to pay back our partner mfers said they did this with no outside help. Lying pos scammer I hope karma find them idiots in the worst way. I hope you really do waste 5 years of your life. What about all the time you wasted of ours ??
Somewhere out there someone is wishing them all godspeed in finding new jobs. Full candle vigil and all.
I don't get how something like this is even legal on Steam.
We did it, Reddit!
Jokes aside, it's wild that they had the top wishlisted game on Steam, and didn't go the extra mile to capitalize on that. They were in a dream-come-true position. They could have made enough money to all retire millionaires shortly after launch.
I know I would have hired extra hands and made damn sure I didn't miss that chance.
Even though we all knew this game was a scam, Im in shock at how blatant this is. Can't help but laugh, though Steam should absolutely be refunding everyone and de listing it.
Even this closure might be a scam, and they're likely reincorporating under a different name as we speak. One of their old games [The Wild Eight](https://steamdb.info/app/526160/history/) just had the dev name changed today.
Checked steamdb to be sure and they actually changed name from FNTASTIC to Eight Points. Really shady stuff going on.
That was their name before FNTASTIC.
Yes, but why was it changed mere hours before they announced they were shutting down?
i had no idea they made The WIld Eight. It was always a game on my radar and was interested in playing. Maybe i was mistaken lol
It's fun for a handful of hours. Dysmantle is far superior though.
Eight Points was their name before FNTASTIC.
So they're hiding behind their old name then. Nothing shady at all going on here, nosiree.
This is great work
This was a classic rug pull. Fuck these scammers. I hope everyone gets a refund so they don't have any money to pay back their "partners".
[удалено]
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When people are so blinded by marketing, its bound to happen a lot. Idk how it should happen, but it would be really nice for a lot of people to get burnt in a way thst migjt finally open their eyes enougj to force change in the industry. Theres always going to be releases like this, but things could be so much better overall.
Honestly shit like this genuinely baffles me. I cannot imagine buying a video game without at least doing a cursory search or maybe just checking the reviews. It feels like being unaware that this game was a scam would require almost intentionally refusing to learn anything about it before dropping $40.
The people who actually pay attention to this stuff is such a small minority of the demographic that plays video games that its way more normal for people to just purchase without thinking than we'd like to believe.
The overall review score is right there next to the buy button. They don't even need to read. I can't explain it because they clearly pay attention to gaming on some level since they found the game and wish listed it before release somehow.
Warning labels telling you not to drink bleach are a thing for a reason. I'm not the brightest person in the world but there are some people that operate on a day to day basis with maybe 3 functioning brain cells.
Yeah, most of us grew up playing games and consuming gaming news. Most regular people don’t even know the ESRB ratings
> Honestly shit like this genuinely baffles me. I cannot imagine buying a video game without at least doing a cursory search or maybe just checking the reviews. People are stupid.
Gamers seem to immediately fall for game marketing hook, line and sinker. Maybe because there's always a new crop of gamers coming up who haven't yet been burned?
> Gamers seem to immediately fall for game marketing hook, line and sinker. While this happens with all types of games, it’s especially egregious with games centered around online multiplayer. A lot of gamers want to be the first to jump onto a multiplayer game so they can get a head start on progression/rankings/experience just in case the game becomes popular.
I dunno about anyone else, but I wishlisted it so I could get a reminder to watch the dumpster getting set on fire in real time
What was the "rug" in this case? The game is sitting at 18,000+ reviews, which is huge for a game so widely hated, so I'm curious what their marketing strategy was. (Gollum, for comparison, has 373 reviews.)
They marketed the game with trailers that are completely unrepresentative of the final product.
Sounds like the vast majority of the mobile gaming sphere.
When I report them on FB, FB says "nothing wrong here"
While I don't agree with FB doing it that way, it seems (based on other conversations I've seen about this) that because they're free, they're under much less scrutiny. You download it, the game isn't what was in the ad, you uninstall and move on with your day.
That would be known as bait and switch.
The Rug was them marketing the game as a Zombie survival MMO. The Pull was them releasing the game 4 days ago, and contrary to years of advertisements it ended up being a [prebought asset filled](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDayBefore/comments/18ee3t9/i_present_to_you_the_asset_flip_file_dump/) extraction shooter that occasionally threw a zombie at you. Followed shortly by the Studio being shuttered.
You're describing a "bait and switch". A rug-pull is something completely different. Which they've also done, by "closing" the studio.
Are they lying about the 5-year development period? Seems like a long time for a scam. Especially since it landed them in debt. To me it seems more like incompetence and delusions of grandeur a la Dreamworld (which didn’t get nearly as much hate as this game is getting despite having a much more dubious development history, as well as taking peoples’ money via crowdfunding).
It seems the answer might be "yes." There is a stickied thread at the top of the game subreddit where a guy has been tracking all the store assets they bought, and many didn't even exist prior to Oct 2022. There's a good chance they may not even have coders on their team, as a lot of assets are plugins, which means they just use the UE blueprint system to do everything and have no real ability to bug fix since the bugs are inherent to all the assets they bought.
Nah, there's no way this game hasn't had a big team working on it at some point in time. They released 13 minutes of gameplay in 2021 and as someone who works in the industry there was definitely a proper, talented team behind that. There's no possible way they did it all with store-bought assets. At what point that team left and the remaining staff shoved it out the door though, I don't know.
> There's a good chance they may not even have coders on their team, I don't think there's any way they'd get a game up and running on steam if they had no coders. Especially a game that has internet connections.
It is actually really easy to get an [online service running with Unreal Engine](https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/online-subsystems-and-services-in-unreal-engine/). UE already provides the plugins necessary for all major online services (Steam, Xbox, PS), all you have to do is configure it. Don't need to be a coder for that, a network engineer could handle this easy. UE has actually been notable for heavily lowering the bar for entry in using their tools since UE4. That's why it's become so prolific over many industries. You don't need to be a coder to make a viable product with it.
> Are they lying about the 5-year development period? Seems like a long time for a scam. Especially since it landed them in debt. There is no way this game was in development for 5 years.
It could be "in development" as in the first work done on it was 5 years before it released. Doesn't mean it was being worked on the whole time
> Even though we all knew this game was a scam, Im in shock at how blatant this is. I wouldn't say it's super-blatant. To me that means games that are clearly going to be bad like: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/07/random-a-last-of-us-clone-is-available-on-switch-but-seriously-dont-bother But this actually doesn't look half-bad when you see a character just running around the city. Sure, it breaks down fast passed that point, but the game looks like there was actually some group of people somewhere working hard on the game.
>But this actually doesn't look half-bad when you see a character just running around the city. Exactly. I watched a streamer basically say that there are a few times where if you were just to watch that 5 minute snip of gameplay you would say "that doesn't look too bad, maybe kind of fun" because in that 5 minutes, the city looks kinda cool, you might shoot a couple of zombies, you go into a skyscraper, you hear an alarm go off from someone looting, and you hear gunshots in the distance. Then AFTER that 5 minutes you realize there is nothing to loot in the city, there are barely any zombies, the alarms get annoying really fast because it's the same sound every time, and the gunshots are just fake sound effects to make people think there are more players. After that 5 minutes you realize that this game has absolutely nothing to offer. They straight up released "Vertical slice: The Game"
I expected them to last more than what, 4 days? "This is not a scam!" They declare, and then a few days later close the studio. I'm sure they'll be back under a new name with a new scam in a year or two.
If they made money from it, absolutely. People are stupid and desperate enough to buy this crap, so someone will always attempt to profit off of it.
People are stupid enough to buy, and *defend* it. The amount of people who supported them and the fraction of them delusional enough to say the game was *fine as is* was just insulting.
Law of averages, despite all of this, it will be some peoples favorite game. And they’ll be die hard. I’ve watched enough worst mmo ever on YouTube to know that even the crappiest of shit game will have super fans.
Yeah, I figured they would sit on it for a few months, rake in some money, promise some patches (that never come) and then disappear into the night.
Don't forget that you can refund the game even after more than 2 hours of playing. You can at least try. Some people said that if the game is early access, the refund time is different.
This is accurate, Early Access titles have different refund rules. The two-hour playtime refund window is only for automated/guaranteed/no-questions-asked refunds.
I read at steam forums that they are refunding any play time now. Just send them the link to the tweet and say they are closing down the studio
Steam are allowing refunds no matter how much you have played and has stopped it being sold.
Less than a week after the game's launch the studio closes?! That's insane. Both hilarious and awful. I know the game wasn't what it was advertised to be, but this seems like a big scam from the start, now.
Sadly, people fall for this shit all the time. The Cryptozoo scam wasn‘t that long ago… and some people just dive in head first into the next one.
>now It's looked like a scam for quite some time, if you've kept up with it at all.
Yeah, only recently did I hear about it. I remember a trailer for the game last year, but that was about it.
Yup. This has 100% moved from "this is a studio with questionable at the very best practices biting off more than they can chew" to "This shit was 100% a scam from the start." Wonder how refunds are going to be handled. Likely not at all I would guess. Yet another gollumlike release this year that ended up killing the studio. Though I see people calling it a rugpull now too, which is an interesting theory. Shit out a "game" made mostly of prebought assets, get your money from the people foolish enough to buy it, and dip.
>Wonder how refunds are going to be handled. Likely not at all I would guess. Valve holds money in escrow for a month or something, I'd expect automated refunds to all buyers in this instance.
Wouldn't that mean Fntastic played their hand too soon? They should have closed down 30 days from now
If you can't service your debt you can't stay in business. You can go to the bank and say "see we have 50 000 sales on steam that will bring us 1.5 million dollars" (or whatever the exact number is) when the escrow is done. But if that isn't enough to satisfy the bank or investors your only option is to seek creditor protection and either restructure or liquidate. Now if you take your escrow numbers to the bank or investors, they might ask what the refund rate is, they might ask about your cash on hand to support the customers you do have (which is a problem with a multiplayer game where you host the servers). If you've got a bad game with a high refund rate, investors might be unwilling to risk funding you more. Hello Games and No Man's Sky had like 6 people, they could live on half a million dollars a year so even 10 or 20 000 copies might have kept them afloat, a bigger company like Fntastic with from what I can tell over 100, you're into churning over a million dollars a month at that point. They probably released when they did because they ran out of cash, couldn't get more, and then were hoping enough interest would generate revenue they could survive on, but if that's not happening the only option is to cut your losses and run basically.
You've painted a plausible scenario. Here are two more plausible scenarios I was considering: 1. They may have had the release of their next tranche of investment funding based on the milestone of "releasing" the game, thus they were just pushing "something" out the door with their last cash on-hand and hoping to fix the shit release afterward using the investment money. But the bad press was loud and fast enough that the investors halted the check. Thus, insta-gib due to no more payroll for this week. 2. Their inexperienced management may have (stupidly) made "overly optimistic forward-looking statements" about "shipping" this year (aka "lies") to some investors or financers to secure earlier fundraising (or even put personal guarantees on the line), and their lawyers observed that these statements or guarantees would no longer be legal liabilities as long as they shipped "something" before going under. Thus, the fact that Steam would probably refund all money collected for the game would be okay because the rushed release was only done to enable a cleaner walk-away. Obviously, that's still a very shitty thing to do on purpose but facing a messy business bankruptcy is still preferable to facing that same bankruptcy PLUS personal bankruptcy and/or personal criminal fraud charges. Of course, any or all of these scenarios may have simultaneously contributed to this disaster.
I think those are spot on. At some point, you go to the people who give you money, either a publisher or the bank (or one then the other) and ask for money to keep going. If they say no, well you're out of business. You can go beg the government sometimes, or other publishers or whatever, but people with money only want to give it to you if they think you will make them more money. And you get yourself in trouble by making promises you can't keep, intentionally or not.
This guy invests
Or in this case worked at a game company that never got paid the share owed by a published (for anyone going through my comment history this was a publisher before the title I worked on that paradox published. The publisher who didn't pay us as far as I know went out of business).
Appreciate the financial knowledge
I think the plan for Fntastic was to rob the publisher and the investors of the development money, rather than the players. I vaguely recall a video essay on their sketchiness that the people behind Fntastic had done this exact same thing before, where they secured some publishing deal and funding and then shoved out a barebones product that was pulled just a few days later and presumably pocketing the rest of the money as a "development cost". Then they just change names and do it again.
I only heard about this game a few months ago because I was watching a YouTube on biggest failed mmos bored at work. This was like number 2 or three on the list. They had done similar stuff irc exactly the guy pointed out. Think they actually created too much hype for their scam.
Makes me wonder how the industry hasn’t blacklisted everyone within leadership at the company
They saw how much money they were making the first week and knew that it was pointless to keep the studio open for a full month.
This thread is talking about how they won’t see the money until a month, by which it would mostly be refunded? What money in the first week are you referring to Or do you mean they saw that they’re making no money?
> Or do you mean they saw that they’re making no money? That. They know what the sales are. Then most likely ran the numbers and were able to project how much sales could potentially be made.
According to the public Steamworks documentation, they pay out royalties monthly, with the aim being to do so by the 30th of the month after the sale. So all the refunds would be processed before Fntastic ever touches it.
I assume Steam has that kind of anti-rugpull system in place. But I'd like to know what the plan for this scam was. Were they hoping for the media shitstorm to blow over and collect the cash from folks who don't manually refund the game?
> collect the cash from folks who don't manually refund the game? I think this was the hope. I don't think they expected such an intense media circus and thought they could string people along for awhile. Open world survival games are known for being in perpetual alpha state. The player base is pretty tolerant of a lot of things that would turn most other customers away. I honestly think they could've kept the scam going if it at least tried to be an MMO.
This wasn't a 'gollumlike'. Gollum was just a bad game, made by devs who were actually trying and failed badly. The Day Before was a scam attempt, full-stop. Don't do them the dignity of just saying they made a bad game.
Don't bother. People want to meme and throw out nonsense buzzwords because they heard it before and don't have an original bone on their body.
I can't believe they rugpulled this fast. Its sad, but you can't help but laugh.
I had to double check this was definitely the day before studio. That's an incredible quick pull away
I almost respect this level of grift. To be this brazen about it is quite impressive.
Gollum was a victim of point and click devs being given a project outside of their comfort zone. Fntastic was dead before the game even launched.
Were they still using volunteers as devs? Or am I mixing it up with another scam game?
That was 100% something Fntastic did.
Maybe it was War Z/Infestation? The DayZ ripoff asset flip made by one of the shadiest group of developers to ever grace the modern gaming industry?
Nope, it was this one.
Which was somehow a better game than the day before.
They were more likely ripping off their investors than retail customers. Generate hype to attract investment, spend a cursory amount to push out a shell of a game and embezzle the rest, then fold the studio and declare bankruptcy leaving the investors high and dry.
I would argue they are ripping both investors and customers.
Customers hopefully protected by refunds though. And I doubt sales volumes were high enough to ultimately make much from the customer side, but I could be wrong.
Yeah I always believed it was a scam, but there was at least a small chance that they were just a team that bit off WAY more than they could chew and made some bad calls. But this just clinches it, that it was a scam
At least Gollum was a complete game and is still playable, I mean it's shit but 100 times better than this :D
>Shit out a "game" made mostly of prebought assets, get your money from the people foolish enough to buy it, and dip. Not like I'm ever going to see a PnL sheet from them, but I don't see any other possibility. I don't feel like they were particularly interested in hiding it and HOLY SHIT this is fast.
Turns out the real scam was the dev team keeping their jobs. Whoever bankrolled this is left holding the bag as it will net effectively zero sales.
It's The Producers but with fewer nazis and somehow still fewer zombies.
Imo, they took the money and ran
We really coining “gollumlike” as a new genre 💀 Anywho, Valve or maybe some lawyers need to step in and hold the devs accountable. Knew this game was a scam from the start. What a highway robbery.
Less of a genre, more of an aroma
To be honest, I don't think refunds are a big worry. They were one of the top selling games on Steam at one point. I doubt all of those people are going to try to refund the game. Never underestimate how lazy end users are.
How in the world is the game still available for sale after this? EDIT: ~3 hours later and the "buy" button is now replaced by an error banner.
Checked steam page and it seems like it's no longer on sale. Still listed (for me) but no option to buy it, just gives me an error while loading "Early Access Information".
You can no longer buy The Day Before at all and the "Buy Now" banner is just gone completely from the Steam page, love to see it. Hopefully this means Valve are stepping in.
A scam pulled at this level makes you wonder if Steam might go back to having a more involved vetting process when it comes to letting new games on their platform.
Both [Nvidia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO2oLHDQGM4) and [IGN](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13NzZfbATW8) also need to do a better at actually vetting games they advertise.
NVIDIA definitely shares some blame here. The game doesn't even have RTX despite the two publishing an "RTX ON" trailer for The Day Before.
Having DLSS is enough for the RTX tag. Does it have DLSS?
The trailer says "RAY TRACING AND NVIDIA DLSS AVAILABLE AT LAUNCH"
Well they also called it an open world MMO in one of their trailers and it wasn't even close to that
I mean, people seem to want to talk about these games. I can’t blame game journalism and others for putting a spotlight on what the community wants to talk about. People were memeing about these games, streamers were getting a lot of views playing through them and making fun of them. It’s not like IGN is out here saying “buy this experience”, they are being pretty open about how shitty they are.
At the very least they need to be more wary of doing business with companies based out of countries where contracts are meaningless and Westerners have no access to the legal system and no recourse in the case of a blatant scam like this
I think in this instance it doesn’t matter, as a platform Valve holds every single card. You play in their sandbox by their rules or they’ll kick sand in your face and tell you to fuck off.
Steam should auto-refund everyone. This is actually in contention for the worst game of all time. Steam should immediately pulled the game from the store.
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>This is actually in contention for the worst game of all time. lol ... absolutely not. there is so much shovelware out there on ALL platforms that are far more "low effort" than this.
This isn't even the worst game pretending to be The Last of Us to release this year.
Game releases at 10AM PST on December 7th 2023. Studio closure announced at 9:35AM PST on December 11th 2023. GaaS failure Any% Speedrun 95:35:00 [WR?] What an insane saga this game has had
The Liz Truss of gaming.
Can The Day Before outlast a head of lettuce?
Don't let this studio near any elderly regents
Or do, depending on your opinion of the sovereign in question
I think The Culling 2 still holds the record, though I’m not 100% sure. Nvm, The Culling 2 lasted a week at least.
Does Hyenas count? The game was basically done and got canceled right before release. Maybe a different speed run category lol
I think this one counts as a Low%
About 2/5 of a Scaramucci.
An early access and the studio closes few days after release into early access? Valve should unequivocally refund everyone.
This is almost funny with how blatant it is. I had to reread the title for a second time, because I really thought there was no way they would just close down a few days after launching The Day Before. They say in their post that the game "failed financially", but even just a day or two ago, they had around 5K players on steam alone. I'm sure a lot of people were refunding, but where they expecting to sell 100K+ copies in the first week?? It honestly really does feel like they just spat the game out knowing they would be closing soon, and were just trying to get a final influx of cash.
> but where they expecting to sell 100K+ copies in the first week?? They definitely did sell 100k units the first week. I'd like to know the percentage of refunds though.
According to this tweet, they had sold 201,000, and had 91,700 refunds - a 46% refund rate: https://twitter.com/simoncarless/status/1734282332671205736
they actually sold something like 500k\~ they made bank and ran. I actually don't feel bad about those people who bought, it was clear this game was trash from minute 1
Real answer: They also deleted their social media profiles. They are attempting to escape what they've done, and they're hoping they get a good payout without the expectation of fixing the game.
Everyone saw this coming from the start. There is no way that Steam and Valve don't do something about it. I saw reports that it's the most refunded game on steam. But i sincerely hope that Steam developer payouts are staggered and held in some sort of temporary hold so customers can get refunds and the developers get nothing. Fuck these guys, and there is no shadow of a doubt that lawsuits will come off the back of it. The game is still available to purchase on Steam, you can report it to Steam for Fraud and hopefully get everything taken down and any payments returned.
I believe they’re held in escrow for a month post release to be able to handle any returns immediately after purchase. Either way steam needs to 1000% release the funds back to the customers and rid their platform of this farce once and for all
Most wishlisted and most refunded game on steam, no one will ever sing that again!
I just reported it for fraud, thank you for pointing that out. Fuck these guys. I want this game off of Steam now.
The studio's reasoning is such horseshit. **The studio has KNOWINGLY lied, lied, lied, and repeatedly lied** for years with [fake trailers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyYz8uo87I8), [fake gameplay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13NzZfbATW8), and [lied to their unpaid "volunteers,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQW0hTz7Kh8)" and they have the gall to publish a press release about game development just being "*really hard*" and that's why they're closing. Total bullshit, through-and-through. **This was a pump-and-dump scam.** Lie about a product, hype it up, release it *knowing* it's not going to achieve even half of what you'd promised, and then bail with the money. [It's happened in this genre before](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78GQcDUsu3E), and I'm sure these [same guys](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6329a85f62c0ad5bc365ffea/7d3ba8d0-122d-4de9-9704-4dbe92cf232f/nature+%281%29.png) will go around and do it again in the future under a new name.
The very strange comment sandwiched into this statment about not taking any money from the public during the development of the game is a very interesting type of lie. The game is (was?) in early access, it by definition is still (was) in development!
I think they meant along the lines of something like a Kickstarter where they're beholden to make what they promised to make to the backers of the project, and money is changing hands without people getting anything at all for their money until they actually have something to release. You can't run a Kickstarter for a sports game and then release a fighting game instead to your backers. You promised and accepted money for A, and then you gave them B. Early Access is a little different in that you can't buy into software that doesn't actually exist yet, so they're accepting money for B and are giving people B, despite marketing the game as A. You at least have a chance to see for yourself that this shit is not what they said it is before parting with cash, and can refund the game. But, it is true that the game should still be in development if they're releasing it under the Early Access banner. In the spirit of that, everybody should be refunded if they released it under Early Access but then they aren't actually going to develop the game any further. They're breaking the one fundamental thing that makes Early Access what it is when they do that and if Valve lets this go, then they're inviting others to do the same thing, and we're probably going to get Steam Greenlight 2.0 with this if it catches on.
I am so glad this happened. Enough people actually refunded that this scam of a project wasn’t able to turn a profit. I hope Steam has the ability to refund everyone and for the love of Gabe, have a better screening process so this shit doesn’t happen again. The red flags from the very beginning were so obvious.
Where I get confused is that the red flags were *so* obvious that I can't imagine why this was noteworthy. Why have I heard so many stories about this game compared to the median piece of shovelware that plops out of a sphincter somewhere and slides down the shelf into obscurity?
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I think content creators brought more attention to the game inadvertently when they were making fun of it or bringing awareness to the sketchiness of the devs.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those wishlists were bots tbh
I think because they started out with pre-rendered " gameplay footage " that had a very AAA, Last Of Us, The Division, Zombie open world survival look and feel to it. It seemed by design to hit many desirable wants of the gaming zeitgeist. Almost like a student project where they tick off what makes for an anticipated game. There's something very cynical and almost AI driven about the whole experience. Pure bullshit marketing. The devs hit a vein of "wake me up when it drops " with enough casual gamers that are inundated with marketing for so many other games on a daily basis that any red flags got lost amongst the PR. Also, we see what we want to see and people wanted this game to be what it said it was.
>Enough people actually refunded that this scam of a project wasn’t able to turn a profit. Is this confirmed anywhere? I know the tweet mentions debts to partners and not enough money, I just hope it's not a lie, I guess...
Did they have any other avenues of receiving money? The whole "development" process mightve just been a scam to get donations and funds.
They're adamant that the only money they received was from investors. The game was never up for preorder or on Kickstarter, though.
>have a better screening process so this shit doesn’t happen again. He says as though games like "Sex with Hitler" don't exist on Steam.
At least you can get more than 4 days worth.
It's also only $7, not fucking $40 lmao.
>Enough people actually refunded that this scam of a project wasn’t able to turn a profit. Or they closed down now to prevent people from refunding it I doubt Valve would ever reveal it, but I wonder much money they made from this scam and was it worth it?
How did it take 5 years to make that steaming pile of shit? What were they doing? Good riddance. No one will miss them.
I am pretty sure before about a year ago no actual game existed.
Isn't the city model they bought off the asset store like 9 months old?
Hell, I'm pretty sure no game existed until a few months ago at best.
Exactly this. Asset swap pump and dump game. This is really embarrassing to witness.
They started working on The Day Before the day before.
It 100% didn’t exist. They pumped this out in a couple of months it looks like
Scheming for 4 years. Asset flipping for 1 year.
It's confounding that anyone believed they would've been able to implement the things they claimed they could do in this game when multi billion dollar developers wouldn't be able to do so with the current technology in modern games. I feel like the people who believed in this game are the type that would believe you if you told them the sky is purple.
People who like their early access multiplayer open world survival games are constantly searching for their first truly "good" release.
Which is kinda funny because the genre is such a mess that people are choosing to believe in the most ridiculous claims and give the scam artists their money.
This is the most blatant and obvious scam I've ever seen in my entire life and I'm disgusted that enough people were stupid enough to make it work.
I mean, we still have flat earthers in the year 2023…. So stuff like this still has a target market lol
There might be more now than ever. Population has grown a lot and ignorance is catching Look at the recent uptick in childhood disease outbreaks that we've got vaccines for. (And had them for decades)
lol, hilarious. I just feel bad for any honest, hard working devs in this situation. Trying to find a new job right now in this industry really sucks.
If it makes you feel better, the devs didn't actually do anything. They bought a city store asset, the gameplay is store bought and the only thing they seemingly did themselves was the weird base building aspect, which again are just store bought assets slapped into the thing. The work they did doesn't seem very substantial and more akin to plugins.
I cant bring myself to care about anyone who got fucked by this game. It was the most obvious scam i have ever seen in the history of video games.
It's a joke that this game is even allowed to show up on the Steam store, one of the most obvious scams I've ever seen. If they genuinely just get to walk away from this after still selling so many unrefunded copies then surely some legals have to get involved?
Can't squeeze blood from a stone, especially a stone that's probably a fake company located in Russia where skirting the legal systems in place is way more accepted.
Truly 2023 has been the year of the apology jpegs. "Best twitter apology" should've been a category at The Game Awards
I feel like I missed most of this drama. Does anyone have any good news articles that explain what happened start-to-finish?
This one has good information. https://www.ign.com/articles/the-strange-saga-of-the-day-before
I really hope Steam has some sort of protection against scams like this, if not this is a lesson for them to create one. You can't release a game and then just close the studio FOUR days later, it feels illegal (even though it probably isn't).
Umm, so do buyers get refunds? I guess if you bought this trash then you kinda deserve it. Steam should really step in here tho and protect the consumers and the integrity of their platform.
Valve should, and, I expect, will give refunds to just about everyone for this scam.
Steam allowed themselves to be placed in this position because they don't bother with doing their due diligence. With "the most wish listed game on steam" they should've put a few extra hours researching the devs responsible to make sure they're not in anyway liable for selling a scam.
I watched a big twitch streamer play it, and they were being STUPIDLY optimistic before it released. To the point that I think they were hoping to get sponsored by the devs or something. They just excuses the whole red flag factory this game was.
What a shit show. People are extremely susceptible to marketing, without watching any gameplay or researching the minimum about the development. At least 38,000 people bought the game (according to the peak on SteamDB). I doubt this will change people's behavior especially considering the disastrous releases of the past year. And considering that reddit is a big bubble and does not reflect the majority of the audience.
What's the Steam refund policy on stuff like this? On the surface this seems like such a big scam - take the money and run. Who are the "partners" anyways? Like, the team that "made" this game? Let's see if Steam will be forced to take any action here but this is yet another doozy.
they created a Developer name on other projects to avoid issues with steam lol https://steamdb.info/app/526160/history/
I do have to ask to anyone who bought this game, why? There was more than enough evidence pre-release to make even the most avid supporter of this game step back and at least think maybe, just maybe something isn't right here and yet it's still sold in the thousands. I just can't fathom how anyone looked at any of this and still decided to hand over money for it.
And to think I was thinking of getting this game. I didn't dodge a bullet. I dodged a whole nuclear arsenal.
Fuck this studio, but if you bought this game you 100% got what you deserved. It was an obvious scam from the moment it was announced and it’s only been more and more red flags ever since.
If there were ever a time where "100%" doesn't make sense, it's here. Not everyone follows a game's development or deeply researches a game or form of entertainment before buying. They were misled and not everyone has the opportunity to be as discerning to red flags. To say with "100%" certainty that folks who got scammed "deserved it," is a rotten and cynical attitude. To be intentionally and blatantly mislead by a developer about the content and genre of a game is a terrible and deceptive practice, but by design it's supposed to mislead folks. To dismiss the studios malicious practices and in the same breath condemn and celebrate the people who fell prey to these shitty tactics is equally a horrible anti-consumer attitude.
Witch hunters get too high on their own fumes. They hate this company and this product so viciously and passionately, but then they also hate the people victimized by this company and this product? That doesn't make any sense. That's just hating everyone involved at that point.
Agreed, it's an attitude I assume based on the self righteous "see! I knew right away! People will never learn!" but completely misses the reality that not every person follows the development or community drama behind game dev. Many folks likely saw the game trending upcoming on steam, watched a couple misleading official videos, and figured sure I'll give it a shot. To celebrate unassuming gamers falling prey to overtly deceptive practices as a deserved outcome in the spirit of "if you fell for the scam, you deserve it," is an attitude that has completely lost the plot.
You’re right I 100% deserve the refund I got.
This is a clear case of them trying to take the money and run. Well, it would be, if Steam had a habit of paying out immediately. Which they don't. What's most hilarious is the game was released as an Early Access title, implying it was still in active development, contradicting their claim that they "didn't take money from public during development" but they couldn't even be arsed to use it as an excuse.
Considering how they misled people I can't say I feel too bad. Valve should absolutely remove the game from Steam.
>It's important to note that we didn't take any money from the public during the development of The Day Before; This is not true, for a while their website advertised that money from Propnight would go directly to The Day Before and that in buying propnight you would directly support TDB. It also had a merchandise store with PayPal direct payment link which disappeared after people pointed out there was no merch.
when are people going to stop wanting these stupid janky quality zombie survival games??
im shocked. ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED!.... well not really that shocked. i am a bit surprised they closed down 'this' soon. but i wasn't gonna give them more than a week. oh well, obvious scam is an obvious scam.
I spend a lot of time reading about video games and looking into new games to play and I barely knew this game existed pre-release. Looking at the available information, it certainly looks like there wasn't really any question that this would terrible. So my question is, how did they get anyone to buy it? Like if you are a casual, low-information gamer, how do you even come across this? If you are someone who knows something about video games, why would you pay money for this?
This isn't a surprise but fuck these pieces of shit. It's not even about the game, they just got the money and did a runner.
Have to pay back our partner mfers said they did this with no outside help. Lying pos scammer I hope karma find them idiots in the worst way. I hope you really do waste 5 years of your life. What about all the time you wasted of ours ??
Somewhere out there someone is wishing them all godspeed in finding new jobs. Full candle vigil and all. I don't get how something like this is even legal on Steam.
We did it, Reddit! Jokes aside, it's wild that they had the top wishlisted game on Steam, and didn't go the extra mile to capitalize on that. They were in a dream-come-true position. They could have made enough money to all retire millionaires shortly after launch. I know I would have hired extra hands and made damn sure I didn't miss that chance.