It's been a wild past couple of days for studio Fntastic after the release of The Watch Serve the People OnlineDay Before. What was once the most wish-listed game on Steam is now one of the worst user-reviewed games on the platform and its developer has closed its doors. Now, according to a report from IGN, a spokesperson with the publisher, Mytona, says the studio will work with Steam to make "refunds available to all" and that the studio will not make any money from sales of the game.
SEE ALSO: Mashable's best games 2023: No, 'Baldur's Gate 3' isn't No. 1In a year filled with "worst game of all time" contenders such as Gollum, Rise of Kong, and Walking Dead: Destinies, it's impressive how intense the backlash has been for The Day Before. Originally teased in 2021, the game was marketed as an open-world zombie apocalypse survival MMO that was meant to be released in 2022. Its initial five-minute game trailer was reminiscent of Massive's The Division and garnered a passionate potential player base.
After a myriad of delays, gamers who followed the development cycle began to suspect the game wasn't real to begin with—including increasing speculation from the fanbase that Fntastic was lying about the progress of the game. This is all before the studio was then accused of plagiarizing other games (multiple times) for subsequent trailers it had released following the initial announcement.
The Day Before, it turns out, is a real game—and not at all what was advertised. What launched was a buggy, almost unplayable extraction shooter without many of the promised features teased almost two years ago including, most strikingly, melee combat.
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The Day Before was surprisingly released for early access on Steam for $40 on Dec. 7. Just days later the studio closed and the game became no longer available for purchase. Steam has a 14-day refund policy for games that have been played for less than 2 hours, which is a good thing since at its peak player count, over 200,000 people have possibly bought this game. In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, Fntastic wrote that its working with its publisher and Steam to get refunds to everyone who requests one and that the team will receive "nothing" from the sale of the game.
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Mashable reached out to Valve for comment but it did not immediately respond.
Since the release of the game, many users on the Internet accused The Day Before of being a "scam" game or an asset flip—where studios purchase pre-made assets from a marketplace (like Unity) and resell them at low prices to recoup the money back. While it's unclear if that's true or not, the main crux of the backlash rests on the false advertising of the game by Fntastic.
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As for Fntastic's statement on the monumental backlash to the release of its much-anticipated game: "Shit happens."
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