The survival game “The Day Before“ was once the most anticipated game on Steam and was seen as a “The Division with zombies”. The result was a game that disappointed more and more as its release approached. In the end, The Day Before did come to Steam after delays, but it was so disappointing that it closed after four days, dragging the studio down with it.
What kind of insider report is this? The magazine GameStar and the team from GameTwo teamed up, spoke with about 20 involved people at the developer and the publisher, and then shared their findings:
You can read the entire GameStar Plus report in detail here.
The team interrupted their work for the great trailers
Why did The Day Before look so good? What one wonders when observing “The Day Before”: Why did the game look so damn good in the first trailer?
Because only then could the hype arise in 2021, which gave The Day Before the height from which it ultimately crashed down.
GameStar states: The team placed a special focus on the trailers. They quote a developer:
“To produce the trailers, the work of all departments was interrupted. It was common to create a feature for a trailer and then forget about it for several months.”
The Day Before was much smaller, beefed up for trailers to be an MMO
Why was The Day Before so ambitious? Actually, The Day Before was planned as a much simpler project, reminiscent of Fortnite in graphics, with simple cities and a reduced design idea.
Originally, they oriented themselves to their own game “The Wild Eight” and wanted to further develop this rather simple game.
However, after about a year, they abandoned this modest but realistic idea for a survival game and wanted to bring “the revolution of the survival genre” instead.
For trailers, they beefed up the game with skyscrapers and super-detailed “The Division” levels. Suddenly, the studio from the coldest province in Russia wanted to take on the big fish:
A small snowy landscape for a handful of players became a massive MMO in a metropolis.
Employees thought they were really creating a masterpiece
Was The Day Before a scam? No, at least not planned or intended. According to the GameStar report, the studio and its bosses genuinely wanted to implement this extremely ambitious vision but totally miscalculated and overextended themselves.
What they promised future players in the trailers was by no means achievable with the team. There was a complete lack of knowledge and competence:
- For many employees, working on The Day Before was their first job ever
- The bosses apparently had no clue what they were doing, ruled with an iron fist, imposed fines, and created terrible working conditions, as reported by people
- Many young people threw themselves into the project because there were hardly any opportunities to work in the gaming industry in Russia – hence, they had an extreme number of highly motivated developers, but little experience or competence in the team
Many employees were so young and inexperienced that they did not even realize how hopeless their situation was in tackling such an extremely ambitious project.
GameStar quotes a developer:
“I believed I was working on a project that would be a great success.”
The closer the release gets, the worse the working conditions become
How did it turn out? During development, the mood towards the project in the public eye steadily worsened. Release dates fell through, and suddenly there were issues regarding the name.
The bosses became increasingly erratic in their decisions: They played the new Spider-Man and then ordered their level designers to rework the nearly complete city so that it looked more like Peter Parker’s hometown.
According to GameStar, the team worked themselves to death with countless hours, but when the day of truth came and The Day Before released on Steam, it totally flopped.
Ultimately, with the approaching release date, everything was done in such a hurry that to keep the release, they had to slim down the game and minimize quality assurance. MMO was no longer on the agenda.
Only 4 days after release came the end
Ultimately, the team was even still working on a patch, before the bosses suddenly announced the end of the studio Fntastic and the game The Day Before – just 4 days after release.
The publisher is having a vote on whether to continue the game themselves, but almost all employees are against it.
Dangerous mix of expectation and reality
The impression remains: The accusations that “The Day Before” is a scam are half correct. Everything that critics have said is true:
- “The employees are overextending themselves completely”
- “They will never make it”
- “How is such a studio supposed to make such a game?”
All these questions were, according to the report, absolutely justified and appropriate.
But apparently, there was no malicious intent behind it, just a mix of “Hooray, we can do it!”, extravagant self-overestimation, and the willingness to exploit themselves.
This was evident in messages wherethe developers compared themselves to action heroes, in whom no one believes, but who would prove it to everyone.
Based on the insider report, one can conclude:
Ultimately, The Day Before had a dangerous mix. They were ambitious and competent enough to release great trailers that excited many people about the game. But the company was not disciplined, experienced, and capable enough to keep the promises made to players by the trailers.
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