The controversy continues the day before with the former employee saying it wasn’t an MMO at all

The strange situation that happened the day before is getting even stranger.

Following the news that developer Fntastic will be closing its doors effective immediately, a former employee has dropped more information about the studio and development of The Day Before.

Talk to DualShockersThe anonymous source said that The Day Before was never intended to be an MMO, despite its marketing stating otherwise. They said it was actually supposed to be inspired by “a mix of Rust, DayZ and Escape from Tarkov”.

“No one on our team knows why it’s called an MMO,” the former developer explained. “It was always a third-person shooter with some co-op mechanics. Not a single mechanic was implemented for RPGs – skills were an idea, they were in the prototype stage, but nothing more.”

Later in the conversation, the source clarified this point further. “Technically, the RPG mechanics have not been implemented,” they said. “There was no possible way to put that many people in the world or make the world bigger. From the beginning, the idea was that the servers would be under 100 people – this is not an MMO. No clans, no raids, closed centers. It was just like that.” For more than two years.”

When the source was asked about the direction the marketing side of The Day Before has taken compared to the actual product, they said “nobody can explain it.” The source added that there was a lack of communication between the wider team and Fntastic founders Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev. The founders are said to have “made all gameplay and design decisions” and anyone who disagrees with them risks losing their job.

“A lot of good ideas from our team have been ignored because of this [the Gotovtsev’s] The source said, highlighting voice chat as an example.

“Anyone who complained too much was kicked off the team. A lot of stupid ideas were implemented, removed and re-implemented because the brothers thought they knew better than us about what people wanted. A great deal of time and work was wasted because jobs had to be done and re-done,” They continued.

“Disagreeing with the founders’ views, even if it seems obvious, puts you at risk of being fired. When it comes to heated disputes, contracts are usually terminated. Employees often avoided direct conflict with them because they were afraid of losing their jobs.”

The former developer said that The Day Before team had no additional information about why the studio was shutting down other than some purchase statistics and that the game was “financially unsuccessful.” They suggested that the final decision to close came from publisher Mitona, stating that they “did not believe the CEOs made any money from sales” of the previous day.

But the source confirmed this Previous reports from Reddit About 200 thousand copies were sold the previous day. About 90,000 of them have been recovered so far.

Meanwhile, according to financial records filed with Singaporean authorities (where Fntastic’s office is based – more on that in a bit), the studio generated revenue of S$3.4 million last year. He also participated in it Yahoo games seaThe studio was left with approximately S$840,000 after taxes and various other expenses. Each of its founders received a total of S$200,000 and about S$308,000 was used for travel expenses. It does not appear that any employees in Singapore have been paid.

Yahoo Gaming SEA reports that Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev invested S$50,000 each in capital, but what this money was spent on is unclear. As noted by Yahoo Gaming SEA, this could have been for business or residential purposes. Fntastic has not received grants for its projects in Singapore.

Then there’s the office space itself. According to Yahoo Gaming SEA, the Fntastic office was a collaborative workspace in Balestier. The co-op center manager told Yahoo Gaming SEA Fntastic is only using this location as a virtual office space.

Earlier this week, publisher Mytona apologized for The Day Before and said it would work with Steam to open up refunds.

Our Ed played the other day and was unimpressed with the whole thing. “I quickly turned it off,” he wrote. “This is clearly an incredibly basic game with little going for it, and as the Steam reviews indicate, it doesn’t live up to the expectations set by Fntastic.”

For more on the game, be sure to check out Eurogamer TikTok It’s all about the previous day.