The Day Before Rug Pull – When we are talking about the worst game of the year 2023, we might easily think of The Lord of The Rings Gollum to be the one or perhaps games like Overwatch 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare III (2023), Forspoken, or even the infamous silly PAYDAY-like game the Crime Boss Rockay City. However, it seems like an entirely new impossible low has been achieved by Fntastic Studio— the developer of the highly anticipated zombie apocalypse game The Day Before.
Just less than a week after the release of its game, Fntastic, through its Twitter account, announced that it would cease its operation due to its financial failure from developing The Day Before. They claim most of their financial sources are heavily used to pay off debts to their partners.
What about the game?
In its apology tweet, Fntastic expresses its regrets and frustration to not be able to support the game post-release even though during its release day, exactly 4 days before this shutdown announcement, they promised to “continue improving the game and adding content” They are also attempting to somewhat debunk and guilt trip those who do not believe if the game will ever be released and asking everyone to be patient with them.
Fntastic also announces that despite ceasing its operation, it will still be keeping the server online for those who have purchased the game but does not hold any promise on the fate of the game itself. Looking at the Steam store page, we can also see that The Day Before is no longer available for purchase and is sitting at an overwhelmingly negative review.
This surely raises a concern to those who want to request a refund as even though Steam has the most lax refund policy, the eligibility for refunding is usually void if players have passed 2 hours of playtime. However, it seems like the major investor of The Day Before, Mytona is currently working with Steam “to open up refunds for any players who choose to make a refund” and they ask players to wait for further updates on their Twitter account.
Bottom line
In just less than a week after the release of The Day Before, a game that shares a similar style to Day Z and Rust, its development studio Fntastic announced that it would be ceasing its operation due to funding mismanagement even though they were promising fixes, improvements, and post-update content on the release day. The game itself is now unavailable for purchase on Steam, though its store page still exists as of writing overwhelmed with over 20.000 negative reviews.
Mytona, one of the major investors for The Day Before also announces that they are currently working with Steam to help players issue a refund regardless of whether they have surpassed the 2 hours no question asked return policy or not. They encourage players to keep an eye on their Twitter account for further updates.
