The Day Before's FNTASTIC Shuts Down A Kickstarter For A Gaming Project After Recognizing It Had No Chance

Remember The Day Before? Yeah, that whole "zombie survival MMO" that had more than its fair share of controversy? In fact, linking you to the entire history of issues and scam accusations would fill this story with nothing but hyperlinks, so here's a quick link to the entire history if you need to catch up.

In the aftermath, the company behind the project, FNTASTIC, went through its own share of changes and accusations as it lost the rights to the game. In an odd twist of fate, though, The Day Before fiasco somehow wasn't the end of the company...despite a knee-jerk announcement that they were shutting down. The Kickstarter does explain that they're a smaller team now and trying to earn trust, but who's in charge isn't really clear. I'm not exactly sure if the Gotovstevs are still involved or not.

Somehow, the company thought it could finance a new gaming project on Kickstarter last month. The project was "Escape Factory" and it was planned to be a co-op physics-based game. The company was seeking a little over $15K USD to fund the project.

I use past tense above, because FNTASTIC has just canceled the Kickstarter. It was an "all or nothing" campaign, so those of you that DID contribute (WHY?!) won't actually be paying. The campaign actually didn't even reach the 20% funding mark, so the team announced that they were closing the campaign since it was "unlikely to reach its goal."

So will THIS be the end of the company? Apparently not. The company plans to just postpone this project and examine their ability to make a follow-up to their hide-and-seek game PropNight called ITEMS. Remember that one? It's one of the games that used the massive following of The Day Before as a marketing vessel while you were hoping for The Day Before news. It's also another game they don't have the rights to anymore.

Apparently having over 1300 players respond positively to a poll the team posted on this follow-up is enough to entice the team to make a demo...and then potentially seek funding via Kickstarter...again.

To fund things before that, the company plans to make mobile games while they work on a demo.

All of this news comes as FNTASTIC has shifted to Discord in an effort to "be more transparent" when dealing with gamers.

Look, I know not everyone at FNTASTIC is personally to blame for The Day Before and people need to have jobs, but if you're contributing to this team, I have to know why. The company's site acknowledges their trust loss with The Day Before and lays out a "plan" to become FNTASTIC 2.0, but seriously, this is all just words. How do the words of a company that used words to cause The Day Before mess entice you to donate? I don't get it.

If the team really wants trust, they have to earn it, but apparently they're in a position where they need donations to finish projects to attempt to earn trust. Giving a donation is based on trust, though, so they're stuck in a weird Catch 22 until they can pump something out that gamers will "love for decades" as their plan states.

Honestly, I personally find them even ASKING for contributions to be evident that they don't realize the damage they've done to themselves. To even think their Kickstarter had a chance from the beginning is kind of obtuse...but maybe I'm being too harsh.

What do you think?