The Day Before documentary reveals hellish working conditions for developers FntasticAn in-depth documentary on The Day Before has exposed the game\u2019s nightmarish development. Abysmal leadership, maltreatment of staff, and more were all laid bare. The Day Before might just go down in history as one of the worst games of all time after making launch Cyberpunk 2077 look like a Naughty Dog title. The game was so far removed from what was shown off pre-release that players called it an \u201cobvious scam\u201d. After losing 90% of its players, development studio Fntastic shut down just days after the game\u2019s release. Shortly after the game was delisted from Steam and as players called for refunds, the devs\u2019 response was a simple \u201cs**t happens\u201d. It was pretty safe to assume that working on The Day Before was a rough time for those involved but apparently, it was worse than our wildest imaginings. A documentary from German publications Game Two and GameStar details one of the ugliest developments we\u2019ve ever heard of. A complete lack of direction Speaking to 16 Fntastic employees and one \u201cvolunteer\u201d developer, all of whom chose to remain anonymous, Game Two and GameStar exposed The Day Before\u2019s horrifying development. Their sources detailed the whiplash-inducing, dictatorial leadership of Fntastic founders, the Gotovtsev brothers. According to the anonymous interviewees, the Gotovtsevs would constantly call for changes in the game\u2019s style and tone based on whatever flavor of the month they played during development. Reports of multiple overhauls based on games like Hogwarts Legacy, Baldur\u2019s Gate 3, and even GTA Online impacted The Day Before. These frequent changes based on the whims of the Gotovtsevs caused major discontent among developers who originally signed on for a relatively small survival game with cartoonish aesthetics. This a far cry from the large areas and realistic visuals we got. The Day Before\u2019s developers elaborated that there were three vastly different versions of the title throughout its development. One of the team revealed that they weren\u2019t even aware it was supposed to be an MMO before a trailer was published. Treatment of staff The lack of a cohesive vision for The Day Before and the pressure from the Gotovtsevs resulted in despicable working conditions for the devs at Fntastic. Sources in the documentary detailed spontaneous firings used to \u201cmotivate\u201d team members despite the studio heads referring to the team as \u201ca big family\u201d. One interviewee revealed that one of only five QA testers was fired on the spot just days before the game\u2019s release after one of the Gotovtsevs encountered a bug. There were reports of forced overtime with one of the developers alleging there were periods the team worked a minimum of 16 hours a day under threat of termination. \u201cOver the last year and a half, I haven\u2019t had a Saturday off, and for the last two months I haven\u2019t had a day off at all,\u201d they explained. \u201cI found myself begging for a few hours\u2019 break just to find time for a shower or a meal,\u201d revealed another. Developers of The Day Before were even fined for committing errors while working on the game. An incident where two employees were forced to pay $1,930 for turning in \u201clow-quality\u201d voice recordings was used as an example. The mysterious disappearance of the Gotovtsevs The people responsible for the abhorrent mistreatment of the team and the dumpster fire that is The Day Before have become incredibly hard to track down. The Gotovtsev brothers up and vanished around the time of the game\u2019s launch which sources in the documentary allege is because they knew a storm was coming. They briefly reappeared via Microsoft Teams to announce the shutdown of Fntastic but have been silent since. The rumor floating amongst former staff is that the two have begun from the ground up with a new studio developing mobile games but this is currently unconfirmed. These details are only a fraction of what was revealed in the full documentary embedded above. It\u2019s certainly worth watching to understand the abysmal working conditions that plagued The Day Before\u2019s development team. The documentary itself is in German but there are full subtitles for anyone who doesn\u2019t speak the language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Day Before documentary reveals hellish working conditions for developers FntasticAn in-depth documentary on The Day Before has exposed the game\u2019s nightmarish development. Abysmal leadership, maltreatment of staff, and more were all laid bare. The Day Before might just go down in history as one of the worst games of all time after making launch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}