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
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.
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.
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.
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.
it's build in Unreal Engine...
True, although I would guess the central argument still holds water. Most of the "game" looks like an asset flip indeed.
Unreal, Unity; is there much distinction between the two nowadays?
Several paragraphs of licensing drama