Why The Day Before Failed Even Before Launch

It seems that the highly controversial title, The Day Before, was doomed to fail even before launch. This is according to the developers and "volunteers" who had worked for Fntastic, the studio behind the embattled extraction shooter.

Why It Failed

First reported by Gamestar, about 16 former employees and one "volunteer" talked about what really happened behind the development of The Day Before. If you are wondering why the word "volunteer" is in quotation marks, that is because there was an issue where Fntastic's CEOs, brothers Eduard and Aizen Gotovtsev, would hire external volunteers to help in various aspects of The Day Before's development. These people, mind you, were not paid at all for their services.

Anyway, the highly ambitious title actually had humble beginnings. Instead of a 3D game with realistic graphics, The Day Before was conceptualized as a "small-scale survival game with a wintery aesthetic and cartoonish visuals."

According to the developers, it was originally handled by a small 20-member development team. At first, they agreed with the original vision of the project. However, because of the brothers' indecisiveness, the plans had been altered numerous times, which left some of the developers disappointed about the direction of the game's development.

In addition, the brothers would force the developers to imitate features from other popular games, including Grand Theft Auto Online, Baldur's Gate 3, and even Hogwarts Legacy.

That's not all! The team of developers was subjected to unreasonable demands and unrealistic deadlines that often led to burnout. It got so much worse that the brothers would fire some people just to "motivate" the team.

Seemingly small mistakes would result in some developers having to pay fines. A couple of individuals were even asked to pay nearly $2,000 for submitting "low-quality" voice recordings.

Just Won't End

Last month, The Day Before's publisher, Mytona, officially closed the game's servers after 45 days of release. Just when you thought that everything had come to an end regarding the embattled title, the Gotovtsev brothers just could not keep their mouths shut.

In a now-deleted tweet, Fntastic went on the defensive and said that "unnamed bloggers" had contributed to spreading hate against the company and the team behind The Day Before. Besides that, the studio has claimed that members of the media, as well as certain bloggers, made a huge amount of money by creating false content.

Fntastic said that it had implemented almost every feature that was shown in the game's trailers, except for some that had to be taken out due to bugs. The Day Before was promised to be a complete game but ended up being one of the worst titles ever released.

So, what can you say about the recent revelations? Do you agree that The Day Before was doomed to fail even before it was released? Let us know in the comments!