Source: https://twitter.com/FntasticHQ/status/1734265789237338453

Today, we announce the closure of Fntastic studio. Unfortunately, The Day Before has failed financially, and we lack the funds to continue. All income received is being used to pay off debts to our partners.

We invested all our efforts, resources, and man-hours into the development of The Day Before, which was our first huge game. We really wanted to release new patches to reveal the full potential of the game, but unfortunately, we don’t have the funding to continue the work.

It’s important to note that we didn’t take any money from the public during the development of The Day Before; there were no pre-orders or crowdfunding campaigns. We worked tirelessly for five years, pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into the game.

At the moment, the future of The Day Before and Propnight is unknown, but the servers will remain operational.

We apologize if we didn’t meet your expectations. We did everything within our power, but unfortunately, we miscalculated our capabilities. Creating games is an incredibly challenging endeavor.

We’re grateful to everyone who supported us during these difficult years. It’s been a fantastic journey over the past eight years:
2015: Opening of the studio
2017: Release of The Wild Eight
2018: Release of Dead Dozen
2018: Release of Radiant One 2021: Release of Propnight
2023: Release of The Day Before

  • ComputerSagtNein@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    They are scammers and nobody should feel sorry for them.

    I bet even this was planned from the beginning. Get some money out of the “game” and then just disappear.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The amount of people who don’t understand how this is a scam is sad. It’s not about the pocket change from steam sales (which they may get or may not at all), it’s about living for a few years on investor money and doing nothing (or working your own business). And they did release a game at the end, so the investors cannot easily sue them for fraud, as they can just put their hands up and say they tried, it just didn’t work out.

    • avater@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Get some money out of the “game” and then just disappear.

      Is this even possible with the way steam handles the payment of developers? If I remember correctly you get the money not directly and steam also freezes a certain part for refunds.

      • KISSmyOS@lemmy.worldOP
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        11 months ago

        The few people at the top of the studio paid themselves a juicy salary from investors’ money for 5 years, then released a Unity asset pack they bought for a few hundred bucks as finished end product.

  • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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    11 months ago

    That was fast. Their claim of 5 years in development is histerical.

    The city map is a bought asset for a few hundred bucks. The survival mechanics were a bought kit too.

    If you cut out marketing you could build that type of asset flip in weeks to months.

    • Rose@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’m not even sure they paid for those assets. Asset piracy is a thing.

  • simple@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Wow, that was fast. Usually you’d get an apology post and a promise things would get better before a studio admits it failed.

    From the post it sounds like they could’ve been swimming in debt and can’t pay for any more development.

  • Lunar@lemmy.wtf
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    11 months ago

    That sucks, but the studio was very misleading about The Day Before.

    • Goronmon@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      What’s crazy to me is that the game looks as good as it does on a surface level. It doesn’t immediately stand out as a “This is a garbage game that is going to lead to a studio closure”, at least until you see the person actually play the game.

      • Maxe@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        I think we’re going to see a lot more of those types of games in the future. It’s pretty easy to make a decent looking game with UE 5 - still doesn’t give it any soul though.

    • Lmaydev@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      The city looks amazing! I’m guessing they spent all their time on the graphics and forgot the actual game.

  • Neato@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    To be fair, it seems like they’ve made 5 games and 4/5 weren’t very good. Not surprised this was their last hurrah. I know Steam scores generally don’t equate directly to sales, let alone profits, but it seems like the company was struggling.

  • Aielman15@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Sad to see another dev forced to close.

    I admit I had never heard of them nor their games.