Yeah, I know I already put the finishing touches and the ribbon on the dying of Fntastic, but as it turns out developments were happening even at the moment I was writing that article! Because as it turns out, whilst everyone was busy circling around and mocking the dying of Fntastic's light, those hard working developers were sticking their noses down to the grindstone and fixing all the many problems with the game- squeaking out melee and vaulting in a matter of hours and finally bringing the sheen of quality to The Day Before! Except no, I just lied to you. They were actually planning their escape and attempting to fake their deaths in what has to be one of the most ignoble back-door ejections from the industry that any small developer has ever suffered from. Woe be the day that Fntastic decided to depict themselves as a 'AAA' developer, because from that height their fall has just been unavoidable.
So for those that don't know let's hit the 'quick recap' button. Fntastic were the developers of one survival game and one Prop Hunt game- (For which I'm exercising quite some restraint not to call a rip-off... Oops.) before they decided 'that's enough practice, let's go and make a giant survival MMO to rival that of Rust and Day Z.' Now I'll be honest, I find the MMO genre to be rife with developers who have no idea what they're signing up for when they attack it, so I personally always thought this game was going to be trash, no matter how shiny their trailers. (Couldn't have dreamt of how bad it would be.) But survival games in general did seem to usher in an age of developers who broke many of the fundamental rules of development and usually created passionless wastes of space in the doing, and yet found insane success in doing so. I can only imagine Fntastic were seeing visions of 'ARK: Survival Evolved' in their mind with dollar-signs for eyes when they conjured up this trip into eternity.
And of course, it turned out to be a fools game. The Day Before was a game so far beyond their capabilities that Fntastic has to carefully orchestrate totally false trailers that the community delighted in ripping apart piece by piece for how obviously staged they were with fake depictions of open world design and survival gameplay. Their absolute failure to do even the basic most standards meant that after years of development the game ended up in a legal dispute over it's name with a calendar App also called 'The Day Before'. They were recorded begging for volunteers to do unpaid labour on their nothing-game. And then when the day of release came, it took less than a couple of days for people to realise it was nothing but a shoddily slapped together asset flip and these absolute Neanderthals hadn't developed a single thing in all their years on the game. Makes me wonder if the same is true about 'The Wild Eight' and 'Prop Hunt'...
Of course, such would the moment for any developer to slink away- but not Fntastic! They promised they would stick with the game for as long as they needed, fix the bugs, add in melee, throw some vaulting animations together and do whatever they needed to do in order to deliver a product to players that they could be proud to call their own! And that optimism lasted about 12 hours before the company was declaring their own bankruptcy and they shut down the doors. Turns out that The Day Before was such a disaster that it instantly killed the company and now they need to take every penny they did make and pay off their 'partners'. Except... Mytona, the publisher, claims that Fntastic didn't make any money and that they would be spending the profits paying refunds out... So who is telling the truth here? Well, history would dictate that no matter what the situation- Fntastic is probably lying somehow. So let's see what they're up to these days, shall we?
Well it would seem that other games which were previously listed as being developed by Fntastic have undergone a small update, bringing the new name 'Eight Points' up to the forefront. So is this how it is? Is Fntastic faking their death, throwing on a moustache and walking right back into the development scene pretending to be someone else? And whatsmore, how on earth are they hiding behind an actual game that was made, like 'The Wild Eight', when the product they put out featured tale-tail signs of 'no clue what we're doing'? Well, would you believe it- but 'Eight Points' is not Fntastic under a different name! Oh no. You see Fntastic did indeed make 'The Wild Eight' presumably in some past version of themselves when their company was made up of actual developers. But that game was sold off to the publisher quite a while ago, and their name remained on the product for the sake of prosperity and likely for the rubbed-off aplomb.
In the time since then Fntastic has undergone the kind of downfall whispered about in legends featuring falling burning Greek men. So disastrous has their fall been that everyone who has ever touched them have felt the brunt of the carnage. 'The Wild Eight', for example, has suffered a plethora of negative reviews in the wake of a mob of crusading users eager to burn every cubbyhole that Fntastic has tried to squeeze into. The current owners of the game changed their name as a defensive precaution to differentiate themselves from Fnastic, and in doing so activated the Streisand effect making themselves seem even more like the fleeing developer trying to hide in plain sight. So as far as anyone can tell, Fntastic are still known as themselves. For better or... who are we kidding- this is the worst things can get!
And they are pulling the Harry Houdini act out of their backpacks with a vengeance! Their Youtube pages have been completely scrubbed of any previous trailer or marketing material, as though people are just going to forget the entirely different game they once showed off all those years ago. A failure of a move considering that IGN and Nvidia still have all of their trailers preserved from the days when both of those companies came milking the marketing excitement around The Day Before- expanding the perceived legitimacy of a game that was already largely dogged with compelling accusations of falsehood even in the largest throes of it's fame. Ethical questions aside- there's no hiding from what you are. When the words are uttered that the Internet doesn't forget, it's a bit of a misnomer, because the Internet are people- and people remember how to hold onto seething hatred. (Why else do you think the Crusades went on as long as they did?)
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