Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, investigations probing into the debacle that was The Day Before surface and turn the situation from sour to utterly hellish. Recently, campaigns compiled to find out the inner workings of The Day Before’s development path were published online, with a slew of insiders and ex-employees emerging from the darkness to discuss the devastating and deceptive circumstances that ultimately led to the highly publicised downfall of The Day Before.
In case you’ve forgotten, The Day Before was released back in December after several years of delays, legal issues, and vaporware claims – and then was almost immediately pulled offline again as the developer, FNTASTIC, collapsed and claimed financial ruin.
It Never Ends
In the recent investigations published by GameStar and Game Two, dozens of ex-employees who were once closed to the project – or directly contributed to it – spoke out about harrowing conditions and a development path fraught with pitfalls and immense concerns.
It was revealed that, at one point, there were three versions of The Day Before being worked on at the same time, with developers being split based on increasingly frequent demands from higher-ups at FNTASTIC. There were reported calls to emulate successful features from other games hitting the market, and it all became drastically unrealistic and overcomplicated.
In the interviews that formed the foundation of the investigations, it was claimed that Fntastic’s leaders would spontaneously dismiss staff based on the most minor mistakes. There were also reports of fines being issued against employees – who were mostly volunteers – who turned in unsatisfactory work.
One former employee claimed that they ‘never worked less than 16 hours a day’ while developing the beleaguered game.
When The Day Before was finally released in December, it quickly turned out to be a broken shell of a game. In a matter of days, every copy of the title bought through Steam was lining up to be refunded, and eventually, Fntastic disappeared into the darkness, along with its leadership team.
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