The Day Before's Controversial Developer Return Explained

The Day Before is a name enveloped by infamy, from the accusations of false advertising and unpaid labor leveled at its developer to its brief lifespan of just over a month. Now the studio behind The Day Before is back with another project and profuse apologies for previous snafus, but it seems that old habits die hard.

Dubbed a "scam game" by many, The Day Before was, for a time, the most wishlisted game on Steam. However, its 2023 gameplay trailers soon exposed how promotional material from 2021, which had gotten players interested in the first place, did not at all reflect what the final product would be. In a controversy similar to those surrounding No Man's Sky and Aliens: Colonial Marines, fans were left disappointed after marketing had set expectations so high.

The Studio Behind The Day Before Is Working On Something New, And It's Not Going Over Well

Developer Fntastic announced its shutdown four days after the game dropped, and the game shut down its servers not long after. Despite allegations of false advertising being present for over a year beforehand, the game was still able to hit a 38,000 peak player count, leaving many players outraged over the revenue amassed.

On September 26, Fntastic made its comeback to little applause. That day saw Fntastic drop a Kickstarter for its new project Escape Factory, a physics-based party game that appears to very much mimic Fall Guys. Though Fntastic was never going to easily shirk the reputation of The Day Before, Escape Factory has actually added fuel to the fire with some fresh controversies.

A Problematic Kickstarter

Devoid of context, the teaser for Escape Factory isn't half bad; it may be a tad derivative, but the gameplay presented is of decent quality and brings some new ideas to the table. On the other hand, Fntastic's reputation should give backers pause over any of its advertising—and the campaign does little to quell such concerns. The Kickstarter is extremely vague on details, stating only brief snippets about the core concept and mechanic, such as it being for four to eight players and offering support for keyboard and mouse.

Moreover, the Kickstarter skirts around Fntastic's history. The campaign comes out the gate with a vague "We sincerely apologize for everything that happened" before moving on, not touching the topic of The Day Before's misleading marketing whatsoever. Fntastic also mentions that some of its team members are working on the game out of 'goodwill,' suggesting that unpaid labor is still present at the studio (with the use of volunteer work being another controversial element of The Day Before).

Allegations Of Asset-Flipping

If all of this wasn't bad enough, Fntastic's game has been accused of asset-flipping. Twitter user bsimser wrote a thread about how they'd discovered that a good number of Escape Factory's assets, including the code for its networking, lobby, and matchmaking, were all bought from the Unity store. Fntastic has since responded to the accusation on its own Twitter, saying that some pre-made assets were acquired for "VFX and a small part of the code," but that art and music for the game are being "100% handcrafted by our team."

'Asset Flip' may not accurately describe Escape Factory here, as the term was originally coined by journalist James Stephanie Sterling to describe games that more-or-less resold asset packs. This term aptly described the shovelware of Steam Greenlight and mobile gaming at the time, but it seems that Escape Factory does at least have some original bones. Still, The Day Before has already shown Fntastic to be misleading in its marketing, and this case is not dissimilar.

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