The Fntastic Shut Down Gets Weird: Vulgarities To Customers And A Rebrand
from the shit-happens dept
I will admit, after my last post on Russian game developer Fntastic shutting down operations days after the release of the much-hyped The Day Before, I really thought it would be my last post on the this whole fiasco. But, no, it turns out that the developer has given us more to write about. If you need a quick summary, Fntastic hyped up the game as a zombie apocalypse MMO for several years, with lots of rumors swirling around as to whether the game was real, whether it was a scam, or whether it was a money-laundering operation. The game finally got released, got slammed by reviewers and the public alike, and four days later the studio announced it was shutting down.
But rather than going away quietly, Fntastic has both gone about trying to disappear itself from all corners of the internet as well as responding to pissed off customers in a manner that certainly doesn’t inspire any confidence that this was a professionally run organization.
Failing this badly at delivering a usable game after hyping the shit out of it for several years only to have the coda to this story being the developer telling someone “Shit happens” is a level of reputational perniciousness I haven’t encountered previously. This also comes days after the game was delisted from Steam, Fntastic wiped its own website from the internet, its YouTube channel and the CEO’s ExTwitter account was disappeared, and it has been left to the publisher, Mytona, to address the matter of refunds to customers.
This has been a complete shitshow, obviously. But if you thought the folks behind Fntastic had learned their lesson and moved on to separate endeavors where perhaps they might be more successful, it appears instead that they’d like to play subterfuge games to give this whole thing another try.
One thing that is clear: “shit happens” appears to be the extent of Fntastic taking accountability for the mess. Players have already spotted the studio seemingly attempting to rebrand as “8 Points” on Kickstarter, Steam, and elsewhere so that the stink of The Day Before doesn’t rub off on its other projects.
As long as the public has some sense that 8 Points equals Fntastic, if that’s even accurate, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would hand a copper penny over to these folks ever again.
Editor’s Note: The article originally referred to the game as “The Day After” rather than “The Day Before,” but given that the game barely exists, it’s not clear this matters. Still, it has been corrected.
Filed Under: scams, the day before, video games
Companies: 8 points, fntastic, mytona
Comments on “The Fntastic Shut Down Gets Weird: Vulgarities To Customers And A Rebrand”
I’d like to remind folks that pennies (US coin) haven’t been fully copper since 1857, and haven’t been better than copper-washed zinc since 1982.
Not that I would hand them a copper-washed zinc penny to them either.
Re:
Some are steel
Re: Re:
Do I hear wood?
Re:
Don’t be “that guy”.
Who are you quoting there, champ?
Re:
Read the article, “champ”. Link’s in the second paragraph.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
Two paragraphs and two screenshots away from the quoted graph? Yeah, seems about right for this shitshow.
Re: Re: Re:
You don’t like it? Then leave. No one is forcing you to come here.
But you won’t, of course. You’ll just continue to bitch.
Re: Re: Re:
Ooo. A new one for the citation trolls! Guess the Hbomberguy video gave you guys a renewed drive.
Graph? what graph? The only quote doesn’t come with a graph, nor is there a graph in the article. The link to a source comes at the beginning of the summary of the information that comes from that source. A quote was rightly added where the article was quoted directly.
Re: Re: Re:2
It’s the cool, foreshortened way to say “paragraph”, even though they already had typed “paragraph” once before, but couldn’t be bothered with a leading apostrophe.
$KID tells me that Steam pays out to developers at the end of each month. Also they’ve been very accommodating about providing refunds. So it’s likely Fntastic won’t see a dime out of this.
Are Fntastic part of Russia’s war with the west?
Will this be the 8th post about 8-points?
Nein!
Anyway, Reddit link now says….
”
r/TheDayBefore
•
3 days ago
[deleted]
FNTASTIC REBRAND – EIGHT POINTS
Sorry, this post was deleted by the person who originally posted it. ”
Hmmmm, 8 Points = 8 letters in Fntastic??
If you back these guys on any of the fundraising platforms, I have this world changing speaker that will auto-transcribe you notes from spoken word in real time, it understands 47 languages. The world has never seen anything like this, be one of the first to get this ground breaking tech!!!
Behemoth Memo will transform meetings & lectures!!!
Re:
“…I have this world changing speaker that will auto-transcribe you notes from spoken word in real time, it understands 47 languages.”
It’s a simple machine, it’s not capable of understanding anything.
Re: Re:
So those were the wrong synonyms for making a Titan Note joke.
which
The article calls it “The Day After”
The citations call it “The Day Before”
Which is it?
Re:
A bunch of articles on the rugpull were jokingly tiled, or had a subheading of “The Day After”, so that probably made it harder for someone who has not been following this train wreck of an investment scam from the start.
First sentence: The Day… After?
Biggest problem is Valve not giving a fuck about any of this. They just allow ANYONE to pull scams like these on their platform. Look at Turn10, a shitshow of a racing game, yet they say nothing.
Re:
Valve really does need to invest in some content curation.
Re: Re: Steam Curation
Back when Steam did curate content they did it so poorly that people complained loudly about it. Their curation caused huge problems for the visual novel community a few years back. They’ve decided to go the other way and just allow everyone with $100 to publish games now.
Not saying people deserve it, but ...
Who would pay for a game known primarily for its obvious red flags before reading a single review for it? I fell almost as bad for these folks as I do for the dumb Twitter investors who threw money at Musk long after he tried to run away from that deal.
Re:
It’s what people do. It’s why we have things like crypto, “NFT”s, and GameStonks.
Re: Re:
We live in an era not only dominated by news about big lumbering companies like Bethesda who have failed to deliver on functioning product, but also success stories about smaller companies and independent individuals able to generate banging content like Undertale and Papers Please and the like. I’m not surprised some teams or individuals think to themselves, “shit, game development is easy, all I need is enough people to throw money at me and all my problems are solved”. Then they run into several problems, that can be all summed up as: the cash they do get is not going to check all the boxes that their scope requires. They over-promise, thinking that eventually things have to work out for them, and end up underdelivering.
And in the same way that devs think that they’re going to be the next big thing, gamers think that they’re going to play the next big thing. Just like the devs, they think that all the problems will be solved, the team can climb over any hump or obstacle if they just get sufficient support from fans to buy into an idea that doesn’t even exist yet. They’re just as in over their head. Does that make them dumb or equally responsible as the devs? I think there’s good arguments for both.
But what we should be doing is not enabling reckless or outright terrible developer behavior. And to that end, I agree that buying into any kind of hype is likely a terrible idea. It sucks that it’s difficult for anyone new to break into any popular industry and has to rely on significant funding before shit gets started and has to create something functional on a shoestring budget. But the very least we can do is try our best to reduce the odds of someone getting scammed – or feeling like they got a raw deal out of it.
Re: Re: Re:
And I’m all for it, since, yanno, Star Citizen exists as a case study of what NEVER to do with a game with that much fundage and backing.
On the flipside, I’d also ask for gamers to be a bit more understanding as devs try to complete a project that’s more complex than a productivity suite.
OKay, that last point is an exaggeration, but still. Devs can be transparent as the public wants (within legal and ethical reasons) but if the public isn’t gonna buy it, why bother?
Strangely honest final post
Ironically their “**** happens” sign-off was possibly the only honest, forthright thing they have every communicated to their player base. Makes for a fitting end to this almost Shakespearean comic horror tragedy.
Scam confirmed
Well I’d say that puts to rest the idea that the last game they published was anything but a scam.
It would be one thing if they admitted that they botched their last game but hoped that they could use the experience to do better next time but by trying to pretend that someone else made the last dumpster-fire they’re very clearly trying to give themselves a clean slat and unblemished reputation so that they can con people out of their money again.
About Fntastic
Oddly enough, I kinda liked their previous game Propnight. It’s a funny mashup of Prop Hunt and Dead By Daylight. I don’t often pre-order games though and I didn’t buy The Day Before.
The company name is a profanity
F-N-tastic. Shit happens sounds par for the course