Shut all the way up.
I don’t know how else to say this. The developers at Fntastic need to shut up. Shut all the way up until they reach the top of shut up mountain where there are no more ups left to shut. Stop talking, even if it’s just making an order at Dominos. Use the app, and when you pick it up pretend to be mute. Just stop talking for the next year. Silencio. Ungawa.
If you haven’t been paying attention to them for the last while now the folks at Fntastic may not have mastered the art of releasing a game, but they’ve definitely gotten talented at putting their dumb foot in their stupid mouths roughly every time they open it to make a statement. Every time this company tries to explain something related to their completely not fake game The Day Before getting delayed or having some problem, they have a high tendency to lie for almost no reason.
You might come to the conclusion that Fntastic is lead by compulsive liars, because these people can’t seem to stop lying about trivial nonsense and taking a tiny grave and digging it into a bigger PR mess. The Day Before got pulled from Steam the other day. And what did Fntastic do? They lied. Initially they blamed it on a maintenance issue with Steam.
We are currently experiencing a minor technical difficulty with our game’s visibility on the Steam store page. This is a known bug that has affected multiple titles in the past. Please note that Steam regularly conducts maintenance on Tuesdays and this issue will likely be resolved during that time. We kindly ask that you refrain from sending negative messages or joining in with the complaints of others. Rest assured that our game will be visible on the Steam store again once the maintenance is complete. Patience is key.
Now I have spent roughly six or seven years carefully examining Steam’s operations from the outside and I can say there is a non zero percent chance that this could happen. More like 0.0000000001%. The same way there is a non-zero percent chance of the sun colliding with the Earth tomorrow. But it didn’t happen. And the devs at Fntastic knew that it wasn’t the case because they also knew about the trademark dispute.
So let’s talk about the trademark dispute and another mark on Fntastic’s deep incompetence as a developer. The Day Before, we later learned when Fntastic decided to become honest (more on that later) for a moment, was taken down due to a trademark dispute. Some Korean guy trademarked the name The Day Before and had been threatening the company with action and then had the store page taken down. They knew about this when they claimed it was Steam maintenance and lied anyway.
Why lie about maintenance when everyone would figure out pretty quickly and by their own admission? Again, compulsive liars don’t need a reason. They just lie. Either way, the game was now delayed to November at the earliest with most people surmising that this was an excuse to delay release because the popular conspiracy is that the game is fake and the developers have nothing to show for it. Remember this game was supposed to be launching in March and the devs really haven’t shown anything of substance outside of some vertical slices.
And wouldn’t you know it, they were planning on a big reveal with extended gameplay video and ohhh golly that won’t be able to come out until they talk with their lawyers. Now a normal developer might get away with this claim. But since Fntastic has seen fit to burn pretty much all of their goodwill by lying and being rather aggressive and abrasive in their lies, the assumption has pretty much been that this is another part of the delaying tactic for showing a game that doesn’t really exist.
Well when I said that Fntastic decided to be honest, I wasn’t really that honest. Turns out the trademark dispute was just a happy accident, because after blaming the trademark takedown, the developers went on IGN and admitted the game was always going to be delayed. The totally real game called The Day Before that is actually in development and totally exists. Three excuses over three days, and now people don’t believe this one.
At this point if The Day Before truly is fake, then the only people who have been scammed by Fntastic are NVidia and publisher Mytona, and I can’t feel too bad for either party. I’m sure Mytona doesn’t care. Their investments in their own dead-end metaverse app tells me they aren’t against the idea of wasting money on doomed garbage. Their metaverse hasn’t had any conversation around it since December 2021.
Whatever the case is, be it the game being fake or real or roughly 25% of where the devs wanted it to be at this point thanks to mismanagement and general lack of unified vision and talent, I’ll depart on this message: Shut up. For your own good, just shut up. Go back into your hole, work on your game, and shut up. If you think something needs to be explained, don’t. If you see someone being wrong on the net and the need to correct them pops up, don’t. If you see someone being correct on the net and your need to lie pops up, don’t. If the fuel company calls and asks you for a meter reading, don’t talk to them.
Shut up until you have something of real value to show the public. And I’m saying this as someone who wants to see you not take the second most wishlisted game on Steam and turn it into a day one failure. This is for your own good. Shut the hell up.
Oh and figure out how the chumps in your legal department missed someone swooping in and grabbing the Day Before trademark. And then probably fire them, because they are useless.
Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.
MMO Fallout 