Fntastic announces shutdown four days after releasing "The Day Before" | Hacker News Reader

Fntastic announces shutdown four days after releasing "The Day Before"

fntastic.com

52 pointsrightenant52 comments

For those needing context, The Day Before is a survival style game. (shooters usually, limited supplies, always hostile zones with NPC enemies and player enemies (usually)

The genre is fair well established so there were many comparisons during development to existing games in the genre and some hiccups during development [0] and some ethical concerns [0].

Prior to the release, the Dev Team for the game released a statement preparing players that the game has issues, and trying to quash claims of the game being a scam [1]

I have not followed this game's development personally, but when I first read about it on another forum this is the context I wish I had.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Before_(video_game)#De...

1 - https://twitter.com/FntasticHQ/status/1731680871856369689#m

edit: fixed formatting on citations.

Two additional specifics: it was the second-most wishlisted game on Steam prior to release and upon release customers discovered that it was essentially a different genre of game than was marketed, along with being buggy and much smaller in scope.

This led to mass negative reviews and refunds and calls of it being a scam, which the company denied.

Also, supposedly large amounts of the game are basically just assets off the Unreal Marketplace, eg: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/ameri...

That in itself doesn't seem particularly damning; what is the purpose of a marketplace except to save game designers from having to reinvent the wheel?

Surely there's more to the accusation, but I don't see how "paying someone else to design part of your video game and then selling a game with those parts in it" would be in any way shocking.

Seems like a smart way to get the important parts of game play down and some traction and then have the money and capacity to focus on bespoke DLC.

On one hand, yes. Video games use stock assets. That part isn't surprising; other forms of media do the same (stock photos, sound effects, video, etc) and it's hardly remarkable when they do.

On the other hand, it's also expected that the developer of a new video game bring some amount of new material to the table. A video game is meant to be a creative work with a distinctive flavor of its own, not simply a collection of assets -- and, from the sound of it, the latter is essentially what The Day Before is.

You can make a fun game with minimal own assets. However, making a game that way shouldn't result in insolvency.

do we expect a chef to grow all of his own wheat, grind all the flour, sift it, and then make all of the bread?

nah, unless it's a main push they'll buy from a B2B bakery down the street.

even restaurants where most stuff is bought from Sysco can be pretty dang amazing, because the magic is the cooking and blending of elements.

The Day Before is just hype and BS. the gaming industry is now bigger than movies and there is just as much graft and hustle as anywhere.

> do we expect a chef to grow all of his own wheat, grind all the flour, sift it, and then make all of the bread?

No. But -- to continue with the metaphor -- we don't expect them to be reheating TV dinners in the kitchen and calling them gourmet meals either.

It really comes down to the “large amounts”.

If you’re using the asset store for some things, that’s fine, that’s the point.

If 100% of your game is asset store assets that’s a problem.

So, it really comes down to how much you lean on the asset store, and how much you do internally.

Ae a gamer, it doesn’t bother me one bit where the assets are from. Just make it fun and engaging.

Edit: stolen assets bother me, legally obtained ones don’t.

I think “asset flip” tends to be associated with totally derivative, lifeless gameplay.

I haven’t seen a lot of games called “asset flips” that are described as “fun engaging gameplay”.

I'd agree. This sounds like a terrible game. It doesn't sound terrible because they used large amounts of assets from the unreal marketplace though. They just made a game that wasn't very good.

I agree - no different to pulling together open source libraries in a codebase generally.

The concern is that they are doing an "asset flip", pulling together assets into a playable game and selling that off with no huge real work involved - especially given that their marketing and trailers had promised a 'game changing' experience. It's more about the mismatch of the advertising and positioning with that, and all of the aspects combined (different genre to announcement trailers, missing key features they'd talked about, large amounts of assets from the marketplace, buggy gameplay, etc).

That said, their use of marketplace assets seems... significant: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDayBefore/comments/18ee3t9/i_pre...

What is an asset flip?

It's basically this - purchase a bunch of "assets" (3d models, plugins, etc) off unreal marketplace, cobble them together with duct tape and superglue, and release it , hoping to at least recover the cost of the assets you purchased + profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip

> An asset flip is a type of shovelware in which a video game developer legally purchases pre-made assets and uses them to create numerous permutations of generic games and sell them at low prices.

In this case, maybe not "numerous permutations", but throwing together the (presumably purchased) assets with the bare minimum components of a video game.

Assets Flip is when you replace the assets in a game with other assets and sell it under a different name. Usually from a demo project or even from a complete game that was "stole".

This game simply used a bunch of assets that were bought on the unreal asset store which is different and tbh completely fair especially with a small dev team.

As an aside, the studio's previous game, "Propnight", was a pretty blatant asset flip as well. The only difference was that it was an unambitious $10 hide-and-seek game; no one expected much from it.

It's hilariously buggy too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRS-ilp_Sf4

I've been following this train wreck for a while, as it was pretty clear where this was headed.

There was a supposedly leaked internal screenshot surfacing purporting that roughly 50% of the game's sales had been refunded. Hopefully Steam does the right thing and removes this product from the store immediately and refunds ALL customers.

For those out-of-the-loop this situation goes far behind over-promising and under-delivering. This "game" was largely just an Unreal Engine asset flip that appears to be hastily cobbled together with duct tape and fiddlesticks by amateurs, and didn't even deliver the same genre it advertised for years.

Is there a better article that explains what's going on here? What is (was) Fntastic? What is/was "The Day Before"? What makes this relevant to hacking/startups?

This brief paragraph leaves me with no idea whether this was a documentary, a crypto product, a timepiece, a React framework, or what.

This is about a game and a gaming company.

HackerNews is about sharing things that may be of interesting to software hackers and startups, not necessarily topics directly related to those two things.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The second paragraph clearly states that it is a game.

I was 100% sure it was a game just from the headline even though I have never heard of Fntastic or "The Day Before" before this headline.

"The Day Before" is a really strong hint, the quotes indicate that it is a title; so book, movie, game, etc. You don't write "The React" or "The Bitcoin". So, could be a documentary.

Additional recent context:

https://www.aroged.com/2023/12/09/the-day-before-is-sold-as-...

> The Day Before arrived on the market and turned out to be very different from what everyone expected. The game is not only full of bugs and assorted problems, but also has a different gameplay structure than promised. The team was in fact talking about an MMO, or a massively multiplayer online game. In reality, it is more of a draw game.

https://www.polygon.com/23992623/the-day-before-steam-launch...

> Players and streamers who are playing the game say it’s more of an extraction shooter, à la Tom Clancy’s The Division, without the balance or depth of similar shooters.

People are really getting stuck in here.

Look, if its fraud of some sort, sure, get mad.

But if this is people trying to make a living making games and not being very good at business, and maybe not even making great games, then cut them a break. Creating a financially successful company is hard - and when things break down it's pretty mean to attack.

> Look, if its fraud of some sort, sure, get mad.

I mean, it has the smell of fraud to me. I’m not sure it is, but it seems like it should be investigated.

Yikes, the reviews for the game are pretty terrible. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372880/The_Day_Before/#a...

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the extreme negativity is at least partially due to people piling on because they know it's not liked.

You can filter for reviews with at least 1 hour of play time.

Up until now they released:

- The Wild Eight (Metacritic: 63; Steam: "Mostly Positive" with 6,161 reviews)

- Dead Dozen (Metacritic: TBD; Steam: "Mostly Negative" with 579 reviews)

- Radiant One (Metacritic: 82; Steam: "Mostly Positive" with 166 reviews)

- Propnight (Metacritic: TBD; Steam: "Mixed" with >15,000 reviews)

- The Day Before (Metacritic: TBD; Steam: "Mostly Negative" with >19,000 reviews)

Scores don't look good, but they also don't look as bad as I expected them to be after the train wreck of The Day Before. I wonder how this would've played out if they hadn't overhyped the game as much as they did.

they're a shovelware company, no surprise.

but like that quote about how you make shitty movies so you can make the artsy ones, The Day Before was going to be the artsy one funded by all of the slop.

Except it was also slop.

I'm sorry to hear it. The game didn't turn out as well as they'd hoped, and I imagine they might have been crossing their fingers for a miracle to happen on release, only to have it become a disaster. Many of us have been on failing projects, and know that it can be due to a hundred reasons unrelated to the talent and commitment of the people involved. I don't know what happened in this case, but I can sympathize with the people on the line, slogging for years on a doomed game they can't save.

So they released what they had as a hail mary, it didn't work.

So over promise, over hype. And fail to deliver. Sell 200k copies, get 100k refunds... Close down...

No pivot here for pretty bad game...

Thinking whether they inspired their name on the New Vegas character:

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fantastic

I don’t know them but it’s too bad Propnight might disappear too, some streamers I follow play it sometimes and it’s fun to watch.

How long does it take for Steam to deposit the revenue from sales to the developer's account?

I've heard this happens on the 30th of every month.

Surprise, things are hard!

There is a reason not everyone starts a car company or a game developer studio.

Seems like their business management was of the same quality as their game development.

For those of us who don't know Fntastic, could someone give a quick summary of what's going on here?

I learned about the game yesterday -- it's a "last of us prequel"

I thought it was a joke from Videogamedunkey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC9a4Dkbq-g (a comedic, but respected game reviewer)

Basically seems like the game is super boring and nobody likes it -- games studio is folding.

To be clear, "Last Of Us prequel" is in quotes because it's not connected in anyway, but they would have loved for video game buyers to associate the two...

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/the-day-before-under-fire-r...

Low-to-Mid tier shovelware company hypes up a game. They made and sold mostly crap games and now this is their time to stop producing slop and make something that stands out.

They hype it up... but then it got released a few days ago, and it is crap.

Scam? Genuine attempt that failed, but they had to publish? Who knows, but unlike some games that got hyped -- and later turned out good / got improvements -- this company just folded, meaning that it'll never get better.

For example No Man's Sky was hyped but when released was terrible -- but got better -- and Cyberpunk 2077 had a lot of problems but recently saw several patches and DLC (and is pretty awesome). Lotta hype, lotta disappointment, but the developers stayed at it and made it good.

You got to hand it to Fntastic, they kinda had a novel life-cycle for this sorta grift.

Usually they either disappear immediately after the funds are raised, or they hang on forever subsisting on what little funds they can grab from their faithful (a la Earth2 or Chronicles of Elyria).

Rare to see this sorta grift which was not a smash and grab nor a never ending thing.

The game is in early access. Steam clearly explains that when you buy an early access game you take the risk of it never being finished. I don't know much about the events or the promises behind this game but I woundn't say it's a scam just because it went bad. Social media are full of people calling it a scam. Am I missing something or is it just the usual social media nonsense?

Original marketing and Steam tags indicated it was supposed to be an Open World MMO, but on release, neither of those things were true; they also took steps very recently to remove both of those tags from the Steam page.

It's not a total scam IMO but the game is really boring and nothing like what was promised in the trailers. An early access game should still be fun even if it's unfinished.

It was meant to be a full release for PC and consoles in Nov 2023 (after having been delayed twice already), at which point they announced it would be delayed a 3rd time, until Dec 8th, and would be released as PC-only Steam Early Access content instead of a full game like they had led gamers to expect. The 2 years leading up to that point were spent releasing promo videos and info which grossly misrepresented both the game's content and the progress of its development.

I don't know that this technically constitutes fraud, but it is completely disingenuous and abusive of the trust gamers had placed in them.

I've seen people complaining about early access games before just because they never got released (hence my question). From the comments I get this case is a bit different though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com