Fntastic Studio Shuts Down - The Day Before Had Over 50% Refunds, Devs Can't Afford Servers | MMORP

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Fntastic Studio Shuts Down - The Day Before Had Over 50% Refunds, Devs Can't Afford Servers | MMORPG.com

The saga of The Day Before has been put to rest? New developments have been speeding by at a mile a minute, and the developers at Fntastic have shut down the studio.

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[Deleted User]

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kitarad

WTF!

Ryukan

Queue the sound Pac-Man makes when he dies.

Aeander

Me: Redfall is the Babylon's Fall of 2023 and nothing will flop har-

Steam's Most Anticipated Game for Some Reason: Hold my beer.

ShankTheTank

I was the first to arrive

Dekahn

The Scam Before. I think alot of us saw something along this line coming.

Aeander

ShankTheTank said:

I was the first to arrive

Did you arrive... the day before?

JeroKane

Dekahn said:

The Scam Before. I think alot of us saw something along this line coming.

It literally is a scam.  All dev time went into designing a pretty looking city (presumably using/stealing existing assets) and that's it.

The rest of the game doesn't exist.  It's just an empty walking simulator with literally nothing to do other than shooting a stupid zombie here and there.

TheRadBrad, Youtube's most positive gamer, who has given plenty terrible games a fair chance and tried to play through them. Even he gave up after less than an hour and refunded the game. For the first time ever.  Even he couldn't stomach playing the game any further.

Ridrith

I don't feel bad for a single person who can't or won't get a refund for this game. STOP buying shit. There were enough red flags here for even the dumbest or least disconcerning of customers to not pick it up. If you can't be bothered to do a bit of reading, or look up some information on your purchases, that's on you.

If 40-60 dollars is a drop in the hat, it doesn't even matter to you to begin with. So who cares. For everyone else, oh well.

Eldrach

It’s clear that they’re shutting the game down to avoid the remaining 50% to refund. I don’t buy any of the «we are in debt» explanations. This is a «take the money and run» attempt. I think they have tried to release it before - but failed the steam «is this an actual game» verification. So they had to play around in the UE5 engine for a few weeks to finalize their scam

FrodoFragins

Good riddance scam developers!

olepi

Ridrith said:

I don't feel bad for a single person who can't or won't get a refund for this game. STOP buying shit. There were enough red flags here for even the dumbest or least disconcerning of customers to not pick it up. If you can't be bothered to do a bit of reading, or look up some information on your purchases, that's on you.

If 40-60 dollars is a drop in the hat, it doesn't even matter to you to begin with. So who cares. For everyone else, oh well.

I agree. The whole idea of buying a game before it is done, and then getting a refund, seems weird to me.

Know what you are buying before you put money down, and then live with your decisions is what I go by. Maybe I'm just old now lol.

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Angrakhan

The game is still listed for sale on Steam. I find that interesting. Also when did you get that screenshot of the Steam store page? I never saw it climb above "Overwhelmingly Negative" which is where it currently sits. Must have been very early after release.

texhnolyze

LOL this is crazy. Steam should refund everyone who bought this scam of a game before the devs run away with the money.

Kumapon

Man not even trying to hide that it was a scam, impressive. 

Anyone who paid money for that doesn't deserve a refund, solely as a life lesson. 

StevenWeber

Angrakhan said:

The game is still listed for sale on Steam. I find that interesting. Also when did you get that screenshot of the Steam store page? I never saw it climb above "Overwhelmingly Negative" which is where it currently sits. Must have been very early after release.

Greetings Curious MMORPGer,

The screenshot in question was taken at 11:35 CST today. For a short while TDB was rising in positive reviews, likely due to pushback from players that expected the development team to fix the game and wanted to encourage them. (Though if you look at the Steam comments many players have suspicions of bots).

At this point, with refunds rolling in and the news of the studio shutting down it stands to reason that all of that good will players attempted to provide to the team has been completely lost.

As you could imagine, Fntastic wasn't very forthcoming with review keys nor were they willing to speak with us directly - despite our efforts. We purchased a game code to review the title (or preview the title as we sometimes do in situations such as this). Luckily, we too were able to obtain a refund and recommend it for any players that have still yet to do so. 

Having that said though, I do have about an hour of gameplay available, if anyone is interested in seeing my experience firsthand. I'd be happy to post it, but I think the video I've already posted of me dying during the intro cutscene, and failing to progress further because of that, speaks volumes as to where my impressions were headed anyways. 

Happy posting!

Kyleran

All too happy to do what Steve won't.

Raagnarz

HAHA, I typically hate to relish in others misery, but the entire staff of this game top to bottom (minus the volunteers I'd never be mad at people being not being paid) deserves to rot in hell. I've previously talked about suing and/or prosecuting crap companies doing crap like this, but frankly when you shut down and run less than 4 days after launch, there is nothing to sue for. I do hope someday companies like this, that do similar things, can actually be criminally prosecuted for this. The lied repeatedly, tried to cover it up by deleting videos with supposed features, listed features in the game that were definitely not, told the public it was X type of game (survival mmo) when in fact it was an extraction shooter, and the list goes on. Textbook scam and bait and switch.

I'm happy for everyone that got a refund but question why anyone bought this steaming pile when pretty much everyone knew it was all smoke and mirrors before launch. What I find most funny is that it's overwhelmingly negative on steam with 16k negative reviews and 3900 positive. At first the my mind was blown how 3900 people could give it a good review, only to read them, and they're all people posting I GOT A REFUND!.

Tiller

They just took the money and ran. The scam, get everyone hyped on a game, even the doubters who will buy just to see what it's about, put it out there, back track on it's features and hide that you stated it was ever an mmo, then cancel it, close studio (or basement) state that it's everyone who refunded the games fault and run away with the money you have left.

WoeToTheVanquished

Kumapon said:

Man not even trying to hide that it was a scam, impressive. 

Anyone who paid money for that doesn't deserve a refund, solely as a life lesson. 

I don't agree with this. because a lot of scams are already happening in the web3 space, and a majority seem to go unpenalized when rugging. you don't want this trend to happen in the web2 space, because then any project can run off with your money and not deliver.

Splattr

WoeToTheVanquished said:

Kumapon said:

Man not even trying to hide that it was a scam, impressive. 

Anyone who paid money for that doesn't deserve a refund, solely as a life lesson. 

I don't agree with this. because a lot of scams are already happening in the web3 space, and a majority seem to go unpenalized when rugging. you don't want this trend to happen in the web2 space, because then any project can run off with your money and not deliver.

I agree but for different reasons. It is easy to say that people should have known that the game was going to be bad, but that isn't really how casual gaming works. Casual gamers don't spend hours perusing gaming sites looking for the nitty gritty. They see a trailer or two, maybe read a preview article, and then spend the money.

This isn't the first crappy game to get people to part with their money, and it won't be the last. And it isn't like that is something tied solely to video games either. I just saved a friend at work from buying one of those $600 craptastic computers off of Amazon because he wasn't aware of just how crappy it was. He isn't stupid, just not tech-savvy. Have some compassion for the uninformed, no matter if it's their own fault or not. You'll feel good inside, I promise.

Tokken

WOW! I don't see that happen very often!

DigDuggy

Never like to see a game fail, but running out of money and 'sprinting' to finish in order to fix the budget is a recipe for disaster.

maskedweasel

When you think about it... Game aside...they just really shot themselves in the foot with a bunch of bad decisions. Delay delay delay, then launch into early access with a hail Mary in hopes they'll keep enough players around to make their money back.

Imo we've seen pretty broken games release in pretty bad states. Maybe if they released into a proper early access when they first planned their release and let testers in they wouldn't be in this situation. 

4 days of operating capital is the best they could do. They weren't prepared at all.