The Day Before Studio Announces Closure The Business Day After Release

Fntastic, developer behind The Day Before, confirmed via X (Twitter) that they will be closing down.

While this is unfortunate news, many were surprised since The Day Before launched via Early Access on Dec, 7, 2023.

According to their official statement the reason for the closure is due to The Day Before being a financial failure.

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.

We’re grateful to everyone who supported us during these difficult years. It’s been a fantastic journey over the past eight years:

2015: Opening of the studio

2017: Release of The Wild

2018: Release of Dead Dozen

2018: Release of Radiant One

2021: Release of Propnight

2023: Release of The Day Before

X

Following the reveal a number of players were quick to express their disapproval of the announcement. Many referred to the final release as a “scam,” with others questioning the choice to release it given the outcome.

These views are expected given the 180 The Day Before went through the past couple days. After being the most wishlisted Steam game, it quickly received 18,524 reviews on Steam. Of these a mere 20 percent were positive, with the rest being a sea of comments about practically every aspect of the experience being poor. Many of these also show they refunded their purchase, really highlighting how quickly this experience left a negative impression.

To put this reaction into perspective, none of the top 30 most helpful reviews for The Day Before are positive. If that isn’t bad enough, the few positive reviews in the most helpful category are more joking/memes than actual praise for the experience.

In addition to being met with near universal dislike, Steam Charts paints a very similar picture. Following an all-time peak of 38,104 players at launch, it dropped to roughly 8,000 players in a couple hours, and is currently holding at about 5,000. This is a drop of approximately 87 percent in four or so days.

Despite the news of Fntastic’s closure, The Day Before and Propnight will “remain online operational.” An exact timeline was not given, but anyone on the fence and within the refund period should weigh your options. It’s also possible Valve might step in, though nothing was revealed thus far.

Those curious in what made The Day Before so interesting to players can find the official overview below.

The Day Before Overview

The Day Before offers players a uniquely reimagined journey into post-apocalyptic open-world MMO survival set in the present day on the US East Coast following a deadly pandemic.

SURVIVE AT ALL COSTS

Fight other players for survival.

Survive against the deadly infected.

Collect valuable loot.

DISCOVER THE NEW POST-PANDEMIC WORLD

Explore the beautiful and richly detailed New Fortune City.

Enter tall skyscrapers, business centers, massive malls, grand stadiums, and more.

Uncover distant surroundings of New Fortune City on stunningly detailed vehicles.

REBUILD SOCIETY

Join the Woodberry survivor colony on its mission to rebuild society.

Trade items in Woodberry and save your wealth in a personal storage room.

Build your own home in the safe zone.

Steam

Grant Gaines

Hey, my name is Grant and I'm the Managing Editor, main reviewer and cover technology for Infinite Start. I've learned a lot over the years working for a variety of websites and reviewing literally hundreds of titles. I also have a background selling televisions, sound systems and more from my period at Best Buy, to the point where I was in the top 1 percent for sales and became Magnolia certified. I always look forward to sharing new and different information with our readers and hope they do as well. If you would like to contact me, my email is grant period gaines at Infinite Start.