In recent times, all indications were that The Day Before would be a colossal fiasco. Originally announced in 2021, Fntastic said it has been working on this promising title for three years and showed the first video trailer that left many of us speechless. Even more so if we consider that the quality shown in the said trailer exceeded that of many triple-A, despite the fact that the game comes from a small Russian studio with little experience and even less in relation to a large production, as stated. be The day before.

Doubts were always present, but They did not prevent the game from becoming one of the most requested (a priori) video game history. However, turning the suspicions into lies that Fntastic has been deceiving us all this time clearly started with the release of the actual trailer that the studio released earlier this year. A sample, this time a real one, in which “magically”, a lot, a lot, disappeared from what was theoretically completed already when the first sample was published, in 2021. And yes, it is true that the jump to Unreal Engine 5 announced at the moment, which would mean having to redo some of the work done before, but the reason for this change was to offer an even better game than what they had already shown us before.

We will never be absolutely certain whether we are facing a case where we have bitten off more than we could swallow, or whether we are directly talking about fraud, although more and more points are emerging in the latter sense. But to understand it better, we have to look at the apology that the studio released before its release. Recall that shortly before The Day Before premiered, a tweet from the studio made several statements, including “Please don’t accuse us of property flipping; that’s not true either. Our team worked day and night for five years to make our dream game a reality«. A statement that has been proven absolutely false in recent days.

With this news, the studio defended against the predictable accusation that the title was built using store-bought components. assets from UEn5, Unreal Engine Marketplace. However, a very interesting thread from @Miri_Saez on Twitter abundantly documents that they did exactly that, and do so by referring to the specific elements they used. Maps, weapons, controls… the list is quite extensive (and more are still coming), to the point where the big question now is what exactly the studio has done besides combining these assets like someone having fun composing LEGO kit.

how do you remember Fntastic announced its closure just days after the release of The Day Before, although a few hours after said announcement, the game was still available for purchase on Steam (its store page is maintained as of the next day, but no longer available for purchase). In addition, the studio has stated that it will have to use the money raised to pay off debts, although seeing that its development has been limited to buying elements from the Unreal Engine Marketshare and assembling them, I doubt what the expenses will be.

Fortunately, despite traps used by Fntasic to try to get the amount of all sales from The Day Before, Steam got together and manages it with the distributor (although there are suspicions that it also depends on those in charge of the studio) to be able to refund the purchase to all users who ask for it, even if they played it for more than two hours, which is the limit set on the platform that allows returns.

What do you think? Do you think Fntastic went too high with The Day Before or was that their plan from day one?