#(Fntastic)

[newmarravanna]

Amanda Donohoe in Ken Russell's Lair of the White Worm (1988)

[aamitmorthos]

if there's any clip of the the before's launch i need on my blog it's this one [from hollyrex]

[theniftycat]

So, there's this newest, freshest scandal in Yakutsk. Fntastic, the company that recently released The Day Before, the most wish-listed game on Steam, declared that they're stopping their operation.

Fntastic is a game developer company created and based in Yakutsk. A couple of years ago they were backed by Mytona, a mobile game dev company that was also established here.

In 2022, Mytona almost completely left Yakutsk, along with InDrive, they did it in order to keep being able to work internationally and not depend on Russian politics. That made Fntastic the biggest and best known software developer in Yakutsk. I even considered joining them after being let go from Mytona, but I knew better. Mytona laid off hundreds of people in the past 18 months, I'm sure some of them got to Fntastic.

One of my cousins worked at Fntastic about three years ago. He was making video game levels. He worked for 12 hours a day without being compensated for his extra hours, he said his bosses (the Gotovtsev brothers) would randomly ask him to redo everything just based on the vibes. He was paid enough money by local standards, but nowhere near what a triple A dev should get (about $800/mo).

He burnt out and left. It was his first job in game dev.

As far as I understood, they barely had managers because the Gotovtsevs were controlling everything. I know that just maintaining a mobile game needs a ton of management, discussions, feedback, approvals etc. They had none of that.

The Day Before is built from newly purchased assets and has very little gameplay. It seems like the production process never changed, they kept remaking the game from scratch, only knowing that it should be whatever the latest definition of "cool" is.

Mytona is their publisher and they've already lost a lot of money, first by developing too many new projects at the same time and then none of them making it, then by having to move the entire business abroad, and now by backing Fntastic.

I think I'd call the Gotovtsevs scammers. They lied to everyone, including themselves.

The video below explains how suspicious it was from the very start.

[blazehedgehog]

After the Fntastic/Day Before fiasco, why do gamers allow themselves to get so hyped only to be disappointed? Is this an age thing?

There's nothing wrong with being excited for things. It's not a crime to think, "Yes, I hope this thing will be good, because it looks like something I want to play."

I don't get excited for things because I don't let myself as sort of a defense mechanism. I don't have the money to run out and buy everything, and if I sit and stew about the peak of a game's zeitgeist, it creates unrealistic expectations for me and the end product lets me down.

I am envious of people who can ride excitement for a thing.

You need to ask yourself why seeing people getting hyped up for something upsets you.

[al3abok]

مطور سابق لـ Fntastic يكشف أن The Day Before لم تكن أبدًا لعبة MMO

A former Fntastic developer reveals that The Day Before was never an MMO

[wolfleblack]

Oh no, the devs of The Day Before are back with a Kickstarter campaign: "Everyone deserves a second chance"

Oh fucking hell. Here we go. 2023 was an interesting year for all sorts of reasons, but one of the most fascinating stories was that of The Day Before finally releasing in 2023 only for people to discover that it was absolutely terrible, nothing like what was promised and was, I maintain, a scam. Like Concord, it was shut down within a week. The developer, Fntastic, shut down. If you’re…

[newmarravanna]

John Bolton, Marada the She Wolf cover for Epic Illustrated magazine #23

Creature from Below

[c4ttyc4t]

putting the fun in reFUNd

[heronetworkgg]

The Day Before: De fracaso a tesoro - Claves en el mercado negro se venden hasta por 1.000 dólares

La historia de The Day Before se convierte en un capítulo memorable en la industria de los videojuegos, pero no por sus logros positivos. Tras decepcionar a la comunidad con un título que no cumplió con las expectativas y anunciar su cierre repentino, el equipo de Fntastic ha intentado borrar todo rastro del juego en […]

Ir a la noticia completa

[gamesline]

The fervor of The Game Awards quickly falls flat as devastating layoffs immediately continue and projects come to a sudden halt.

[newmarravanna]

[aamitmorthos]

there's something so funny to be about evading twitter's community fact checking

[theniftycat]

This shit is wild. This video retells an interview of an Fntastic employee who worked on The Day Before.

It repeats what my cousin (an ex-employee of the company) said about his time working there. The Gotovtsev brothers made all the decisions, often on a whim. The workers had to remake the same things multiple times and keeping their mouths shut, or else they'd get fired.

Also, apparently, it was Mytona (their publisher) that forced Fntastic to close a couple of days ago. Makes sense, they lost a lot of money on that game.

Fntastic changed their name on Steam to Eight Points (their original name), so they can sell their older games without using their tarnished title.

Honestly, just wow.

[ulvespill]

Fntastic Studio Stenger Ned Etter Kaotisk Lansering av The Day Before

I en sjokkerende vending av hendelser har Fntastic Studio, utviklerne bak den svært etterlengtede spillet “The Day Before”, kunngjort nedleggelsen av studioet bare dager etter spillets lansering i tidlig tilgang forrige uke. Studioet kunngjorde nedleggelsen via sin offisielle X/Twitter-konto og uttalte: “I dag kunngjør vi nedleggelsen av Fntastic Studio. Dessverre har The Day Before mislyktes…

[leam1983]

The Definition of Insanity

Vaas Montenegro memes notwithstanding, I think it also applies to Russian developer Fntastic, and its much-beleagered last release, The Day Before.

These are devs who first released janky, bargain-bin App Store cruft and then abandoned weeks to months later, and who then maintained the same formula for a handful of PC releases. All of them tended to lean on asymmetrical co-op as a means of perhaps leveraging a lighter design concept, and also depended strongly on asset flips. Only Propnight, a game that serves as the basically cleaned-up version of the Prop Hunt formula that's been a staple of CS:GO, had any semblance of success.

And now, after years of delays, teasing, exxageration and outright fabrication and just four days after releasing a product that cratered to Steam's worst reviewed games in 72 hours - they've thrown in the towel.

I'd normally give them a golf clap, at least, or some sort of kudos for at least trying - but The Day Before was almost entirely built off of volunteer work.

Not paid employees. Volunteers, which also tied into Fntastic and Mytona's coworking application.

So a 40$ game crashes and burns, and all those people who were more or less coerced into developing it won't see a cent of the game's meagre proceeds - at about 49% refunds on Steam.

That's... not something I'd put on my resume, if I'm honest. I'd instead lie and say I spent the last six months on a voyage of self-discovery.

[hiramnoriega]

Bueno, ¿todavía hay alguien para defender a FNTASTIC?