this term implies that you eventually make it and your earlier lies don't matter in the end. You lie in your resume to get an interview and on the actual interview you demonstrate that you actually do have the skills (even if you faked number of years of experience). These scammers never made it, instead of "make" there was "take".
I think they could have made a Kickstarter for this since it got insanely popular quickly and they could have made something decent at the very least if these brothers weren't completely idiotic scumbags
By automatically refunding, they absolutely did scrub themselves squeaky clean. If you disagree, I would like evidence or arguments contrary to my hypothesis. Unless you think Gabe needs to pull up and hand you an additional fiver, offer to blow you and share an eight-ball, what else could they do? They had no idea that this game was a dumpster fire the size of JUPITER until it launched, same as us. If they had any foreknowledge, and yet not taken action, then I could see a case.
@@tripolarmdisorder7696I think they meant squeaky clean in terms of other stuff they do unrelated to this scam of a game In terms of just this scam in particular, yea they're absolutely squeaky clean, they handled it as well as possible I think
I love how the two guys constantly keep that fake smile and do the same hand movements whenever they are talking, making Oblivion NPC's feel real in comparison.
great documentary but just a small note: by the time the game was about to release they DID get accused of asset flip, from that lengthy 10 minute gameplay video of nothing happening people had noticed several of the models looked like models in the unreal asset store
Having a brain that even semi-functions is enough. I have played games for 25 years, buy a lot of games and it's one of my main hobbies, and the game purchases I regretted, I probably can count on one hand. Just stay away from the scummy publishers, stay away from always online looter shooter live service hero shooter battle royale who knows what else buzzword buzzword nonsense and you already got rid of 90% of trash. I stick near-exclusively to singleplayer games, and they, even in the AAA space, have been delivering absolute banger after absolute banger.
Protip: avoid game hype, and buy games 1 year after release or when they’re heavily discounted. I got to play the FIXED version of Arkham Knight and it was loads of fun, and I only paid $3 for the base game and all the DLC. Honestly, there are so many great games out there, there’s no need to play new releases.
It’s totally legal. And a good reason. Employment is at will. If I hire and the employee does a terrible job why am I required to continue to pay them? In this case , maybe it’s totally unfair and wrong, but as a reason to terminate employment generally it’s entirely legal and common. If employers were chained to poor performers forever, they’d be sooo reluctant to ever hire. That’s the case in many European countries and people struggle to find permanent work and just temp forever.
I love how devs that you have called out over there years labeled you as a scamtuber. This vid right here is absolute fire and shows how you take the time do your research and inform the public of due dillengence. Thanks kira keep doing what you and all the others like bigfry callium etc do.
The company was registered in Russia. They transferred most of their assets there right just before the crash. And we know we can't trust the Russians.
Them not being brothers and learned to be lovers would have been the most beautiful thing. The idea of two scammers claiming to be related when they are not. Getting a bit intimate with the person you tell people is your brother while scamming the hell out of thousands.
The moment I heard that even the team was surprised that the game would be an MMO.... that's a huge incompetence and ignorance. Did they thought that there is an MMO checkbox in Unreal Engine settings? Yes there are MMO kit on marketplace, but it is not as simple as connecting some cables or modify some codes, especially at the middle of the project and bought assets! Even a senior expert programmer would not want to deal with that. I couldn't imagine the stress whoever had to deal with this nightmare.
Convo must have been hilarious. Devs walks in expecting a normal job but meanwhile get tasked with juggling an mmo with guns, loot, trading, thousands of npcs, shop systems etc etc 😂 And half the work is lend from the unity store so everything has to be fixed and checked for potential gamebreaking bugs 😂😂
no, its not incompetence, its malevolence. the brothers are russians. they are vile creatures that wanted to cause as much misery to the people they were baiting into their studio as possible. hiding their game and fining people for making mistakes based on that hiding was just another method of cruelty
MMOs are a really big investment too, anytime some small studio talks about doing one it tends to be pretty shady. It took Blizzard millions to make World of Warcraft and years of development.
@@Th3Kingism and large ongoing investment thats why the only sustainable ones use a sub model with maybe a limited free trial type thing those buy once models don't work unless your new world and have bezos bucks
Whether or not the players were scammed, the employees and volunteers were ABSOLUTELY scammed. Protip #1: Don't tolerate working for free unless you're volunteering at a non-profit. Protip #2: If your job is regularly TAKING money from you, for any reason, you're being scammed. Run.
@@crazyluigi6664Yong Yea is such a coward, afraid of doing anything but going with the crowd. I suspect he doesn't actually have any thoughts of his own, especially since his content is just basically reading articles out loud. That said, at least he's doing it openly instead of trying to pass the content of his own.
Skull and bones is the newest dissapointment for me. Dont get me wrong, its a lot of fun, but they cancelled the single player and the 5v5 mode in order to turn it into a forced online forced pvpve game. I was so hyped for that single player campaign, ubisoft always foes naval combat well and it sounded like "black flag without the annoying land quests"
Yes, for sure. About 98% of the time anyway. That 2% when it's not is for games like Palworld which apparently did the same thing but the game actually released and was it was a good game despite that engine change. So, statistically speaking, when that happens, alarm bells should be ringing in your head as chances are high that it's a scam.
Before I watched this video I had coincidentally watched a video on Victorian match factories and the horrific conditions suffered by workers in those factories; Including 16 hour work days, no holidays and fining employees for mistakes. Sound familiar? Fntastic recreated the working conditions of a Victorian factory, conditions that are illegal in pretty much every Western country because of activists like Charles Dickens who spoke out about the horrors of working in these places. But the worst part is that they got away with it.
This is no longer about a _game,_ this is about two people exploiting young and hopeful people by abusing and taking advantage of them. Absolutely disgusting and unacceptable. *PS: What kind of psychotic individuals would fine their own unpaid employees for not being able to comply with their absurd standards?* _For all those privileged smartasses questioning the intelligence of the “volunteers,” it’s obvious you’ve never found yourself in a similar situation where the only way to make a living and gain necessary curriculum experience is to work for a company with questionable morals. I did it, I didn’t enjoy it. But when desperation hits, one feels like there are no other alternatives available._
Even Steam knew it would be less costly to just outright do a full refund to everyone, than to leave this shitshow in peoples' library and have them not able to refund down the road.
My favorite part of all of this was the "Live gameplay" trailer with the live comms. Like I know they we're trying to sell it as a coop shooter, so they couldn't have comms like "IseehimIseehimIseehimIseehim, he's oneshot, oney, he's cracked, downdowndowndowndown!", but that would've made it so much better
How do I get a job as a fake gameplay voice actor? I work for cheap and I can make myself sound way more convincing than these guys. I can even bring a couple of my friends. C'mon, I really need the cash
The final argument of this video raises a very good point. If you're a 25 year old developer and took a role at the studio, after all this fallout you only have two choices when looking for new jobs: list the 3 years' experience at Fntastic on your CV and hope the disaster of The Day Before doesn't reflect poorly on you, or leave it off your CV and try to break into the industry fresh with nothing to show for the last few years. I don't envy being in that position at all
@@peterjalgalado2243what? It should not fall to some poor fresh hire to shoulder the responsibilities of their bosses’ failures. The people who worked there had no idea that they were going to be used to drive a scam.
@@peterjalgalado2243That makes absolutely zero sense and you should feel bad for making such a terrible argument. I'll never in a million years understand how empathetically bankrupt of a human being you have to be in order to blame the victims who were taken advantage of, over the actual people coordinating the scam. Just an insane thought process.
@@Puxi Your comment is both incorrectly punctuated and adds no value to what was said in any way. If you're gonna try and be a troll at least try something creative.
@@Puxi My name is Yoshikage Kira. I'm 33 years old. My house is in the northeast section of Morioh, where all the villas are, and I am not married. I work as an employee for the Kame Yu department stores, and I get home every day by 8 PM at the latest. I don't smoke, but I occasionally drink. I'm in bed by 11 PM, and make sure I get eight hours of sleep, no matter what. After having a glass of warm milk and doing about twenty minutes of stretches before going to bed, I usually have no problems sleeping until morning. Just like a baby, I wake up without any fatigue or stress in the morning. I was told there were no issues at my last check-up. I'm trying to explain that I'm a person who wishes to live a very quiet life. I take care not to trouble myself with any enemies, like winning and losing, that would cause me to lose sleep at night. That is how I deal with society, and I know that is what brings me happiness. Although, if I were to fight I wouldn't lose to anyone.
This takes “but wait it gets worse” to a whole other level. Thanks for making this. It was very informative and put together very well. I’m sure it took months to make. Great work.
I'm so happy to see that one of my favorite RUclips channels covers a documentation made by the company where i work. Quite crazy because i'm from Germany and never thought that our video about The Day Before would reach the whole world 😅
Between Kira "killing" _The Day Before_ and _Elyria,_ Bobvids "killing" _Supernormal_ and _Stray Souls,_ and Callum Upton and Josh Strife Hayes and Steph Sterling all fighting the tireless fights, the games industry is still healing from the years and years of exploitation. Please continue making it unsafe for charlatans. You are more important than you know.
I would take "making them miserable and wasting their time and effort" over getting them to go away. If (the present-day zeitgeist of) Steam Greenlight is a circle of Hell, then they're not allowed to suffer any less than the rest of us.
Please do not mention that moron Sterling in the same sentance as the others. They're a moralist Puritan that seeks to censor or abolish art that does not align with their politicals or worldview. They are no friend of either the Industry or audiences as a whole.
*At the end of the video, you said the brothers were going to be coming back to scam again & you were right. The last few days they have been extremely active on Twitter & other social media, like RUclips, showing off their new game "Escape Factory", which is hilarious when you think about it because of their "volunteer" employee's... I really hope you cover their return as "Fantasic 2.0"*
As an aspiring Indie dev myself, companies like this make things incredibly difficult for legit and passionate developers gaining the trust and support of gamers. Not all developers are greedy like this guys. It's not what the indie scene is about. These people are scumbags.
What I love about the whole The Day Before shit storm is the fact this was announced and teased for years fighting for validation only to end up as a scam like everyone predicted. Palworld looked too good to be real and came off as a mobile ad. It has a smaller dev team, worked on it for several years as well and also moved everything to UE5. Except Palworld was real and is actually now a victim of its own success. Also hey now, lets not call Overwatch 2 a review bomb. It was the first time in 30 years that customers could leave feedback on a Blizzard product that was public without worrying about getting banned. It was hilarious and FAR overdue.
My very first animation job was at a studio run much like it sounds Fntastic was run. It sucks and it sucks HARD. I can't imagine how many in house "morale meetings" these poor employees had to suffer as the guys in charge fed them nonsense about how they all just have to come together a little bit harder to make this dream a reality or whatever. On a positive note, this happened more than 10 years ago for me, and I am still working in the animation industry. Maybe not at the highest level ever, but I have managed to stay on this career path despite the absolute worst possible start. There is nothing more easily exploited than young inexperienced people who care so so much about about an industry like this, and who will pour blood sweat and tears into a project, just hoping it will come together in the end. They genuinely have my sympathies.
Exploiting somebodies passion like that is extremely gross. Beware young people of anybody hiring based on "passion". Those guys always just want to break your back for their own benefits.
It's an absolute nightmare and I can't imagine how many brilliant talents are being snuffed by these companies that take them in only to drain them of all of their aspirations. Its awful, but I'm afraid there won't be any significant change, not anytime soon. Just a hunch
That’s the only reason I get sad at game controversies like this… There must’ve been some underpaid (or not paid at all in some cases) unspoken artists or devs that wanted to actually do a good job. :( Like, the stories where some publisher or ceo has unrealistic expectations. Mismanagement due to greed or ignorance. Where it’s a miracle that a game was even shipped out because of some poor shmuck’s blood, sweat and tears. And then that dev team shutters because their work is slammed because it’s predictably garbage while the publisher goes on to murder another dev team.
The description of the game pivoting in every direction gave me flashbacks from a brief time I worked at "Cybertime Games" company on their shooter. Firts it was supposed to be Rocket League-like arena shooter with guns. Then they wanted to make Call of Duty instead. They scrapped half of the project, pivoted. Then they decided it's gonna be a base siedge team-vs-team with war vehicles. Then they pivoted to basicallu Unreal (game). And the "game designer" refused to put even 1 page of it in writing or think through the systems. It was basically "make them have teams! There is some code in there somewhere from the days of football arena." or "Make them have force fields!". No details on if/how they are supposed to regenerate, mitigate all damage or % of it, etc. He "Had a clear vision in his head, so didn't need to write a Design Document." The game is called Gun Blaze on steam and it's pretty much in a state when I left that team behind (lasted 1 month in that circus). The positive reviews are hilarious to read😂
I gave a look at the reviews and they did deliver! lol Here's one, without any editing: "Revolutionary, this is REDEFINING the FPS genre as a whole. Take notes, [INSERT DEVELOPER NAME HERE], this is how you do it RIGHT."
I looked at the reviews, there is four, and I'm trying to figure out if two of them, posted days apart, are contracting each other or if it's a typo. Hold up. Read the OLDER one closer and it spelt out the number, so it's the one I was certain had to be right, until I checked the description page, then I realized the review contradicts ITSELF. Again, the number is spelt out so it's not a typo. Edit: Just how do you do that? I'm confused.
I told everyone this would be a major scam, and I got major shit in the comment section. Someone even going as far as to pay me 100$ if it was a scam. I want my 100$.
Ah, The Scam Before. I remember reading first news about this game, and without even seeing the trailer and gamepkay videos, it was a very obvious scam. I mean, those guys literally promised everything everywhere all at once. Without any meaningful background, with a team of like dozen people in a shady shack. But I guess people saw those ever-so-lucrative words like "zombie survival open world with multiplayer and crafting and looting and..." and went all in for it. Not going to blame them, yet I highly advise to do a little bit of research for any projevt you're interested in.
You know that game devs can show a product which is not true to the final game legally right? I guess you dont since you call the game a scam. The game was not a scam
If they released the game for $2-$5 per copy, I doubt too many people would be pissed off about how bad it was. Asking $40 for such a broken game just makes it instantly feel like they have been scammed.
@@xchronox0 Given he said towards the end that it was the fourth time he had to change it pretty late into the process it wouldn't surprise me if that's a product of him thinking it was coming to a close too.
Fun fact, the first Division game did it years before either the sequel or The Day Before did it. Ubistoft had this weird scripted gameplay trailer, people mocked them for it, and they still repeated it with Div 2.
@@anzaca1 Oh, I love the Division games. I hate how it's been somewhat abandoned over the last couple of years. I know that they still support 2, but I'd like to see a new game.
This is why I strongly disagree that this "harmed the gaming industry". Some people NEED to burn their hands to learn, and this was a big enough event to wake up a lot of people. Not just gamers, but devs and distributors too. There's so much wrong in the industry today that any wake-up call is a win.
I remember my friend told me about this game and he was pretty hyped about it. While I agreed that it looked good, I had my reservations. Like I wasn’t overly hyped about it like he was but I didn’t quite realize something was wrong.
Some people just watch a cool trailer, wishlist the game and then buy it when it comes out. Not everyone goes on social media to watch videos about it or discuss it. The people who defended it are another matter, of course. They are just naively optimistic or unforgivingly ignorant.
Actually, the devs put a _lot_ of work into this game. The problem is that most of it got thrown away, because the Fntastic brothers changed their goals or fancy wildly, on a frequent basis (search for stories from former Day Before or Fntastic devs, which is what I am summarizing below) These extreme swings in direction often depended on whatever AAA game they played last. Even if it was a completely different genre or contradicts that they said previously they wanted. Some pulled long nights over a week to finish a feature that the founders insisted on having. Only when that got ready to turn it in, the brothers said they didn't need it anymore because they are going a different direction. Or worse, forgetting they asked for that feature in the first place, "so what's all this about?". I think one dev said that only like a 1/5th of the total stuff developed or assembled for the game finally made it to the final product. And they were refused requests to have enough test servers/machines to simulate busy net activity, so a lot of their net code only truly got tested when it was released. That, and the wild shifts in direction all through the development means that they pretty much had no time for testing, because they couldn't keep up with throwing away stuff and developing what ever wild new thing that came on their desk Not to mention that the turnover rate was, not surprisingly, was high
I still can't believe people fall for these scams with all these insane promises they have no way to deliver on. (And as you mentioned, Prop Night was pretty much Diet Dead by Daylight and lifted so much of its base concepts. Even the maps were similar. Never understood why people ever liked that game.)
There is a cheap buy in for most of the target audience, bored people with disposable income. These people serve to draw in more, compounded by influencers, media and so on. Then it gains traction and everyone is too afraid to pull out.
Oh man, in "Russian Facebook" I saw a bunch of comments saying "I liked it and you are all just haters, it's an early access game and it will get better" I was so baffled
People liked prop night initially because there wasn't really a good alternative on the market for prop hunt type games. Either you played it within GMod or you played one of the many shallow clones of Gmod prop hunt. So people were interested in a more fleshed out, polished (Gmod is ultra jank), prop hunt experience. Plus Dead by Daylight was in the hight of its popularity and asymmetrical multi-player games had yet to fully flood the market. So prop night hit all the right checkboxes for immediate success. Of course once people realized the game was as deep as a 1 inch puddle and Fntastic had no interest in supporting the game post launch, its player base dwindled and died.
These guys should have politicians. They would have actually been successful. There are way too many politicians with documented lies, but with the introduction of, "alternative facts," people actually eat those lies right up.
Amazing story. Kira called it from the start, so many people deluded themselves into believing that this game was real despite there never being any evidence for that it's unreal. Great video!
Kira casually dropping a movie while I'm doing my weekly meal prep THANKS DUDE! I have been loving the content on this game, and you've been following this for ages!
So basically, the brothers okayed too much GTA and Red Dead Online, The Division 2, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Baldur's Gate 3 and hired several inexperienced employees and told them, make this a zombie MMO. Then they changed course and said, nah Its going to be a Tarkov clone.
Worse than this sadly. The new developers where from eastern European nations where there were few options for dev work. They mostly were remote employees. They then paid them more than they would get in their home nations. With all of this, they were misstreated with unethical work hours, unpaid overtime, etc... they also used continent to monitor those people such that going to the bathroom could get them a phone call or fired. 😢
It feels like there's so, so many failed games that - when the retrospective comes out - it's revealed it was poor management that kept hopping genres after they went home and played a new release over the weekend, hopping engines and forcing devs to start over from scratch, or pushing a gameplay concept devs had quickly realized wasn't feasible for years past the point that the game's course needed to be changed. Daikatana, Too Human, Duke Nukem, ME:Andromeda to an extent...all of those with the other accompanying problems of having that kind of management.
lol that still isn’t the end of the story. They have attempted to come back as Fantastic 2.0, and asked for crowdfunding for their planned new game/scam called Escape Factory…
This will happen again, I guarantee it. While these guys were absolute morons who fumbled their own scam, they clearly showed that this type of high profile scam works. It's just a matter of time before someone who actually knows what they're doing tries it again. Never has there been a better argument to not buy games day 1, but it will change nothing.
Hopefully this has shaken the gaming industry enough and set an unprecedented example. I can feel the gaming industry fall into ridiculous greed levers, but scams like this must be held accountable.
Not a chance. This isn't really about the industry. It's about a small team managing to hype a project and enough people either buying into it or not understanding how games work and are made. The owners managed to pay themselves handsomely for years while paying those making the game nothing. Gaming scams are going nowhere. Nothing about that original trailer looked real to anyone who plays a few games. But the promises obviously interested a lot of people. The ideas they were pushing would be a good idea for a game. The negative press seemed to actually give them extra oxygen. I'm sure a lot of people who bought the game at launch were doing it to gawp or see how bad it really was. In terms of the actual industry learning to not oversell with early trailers or vertical slices that horse bolted a long time ago. It feels to me like it's actually got a tiny bit better but it's been an industry standard for almost as long as the industry has existed.
@@stuartmorley6894 I agree with the general idea but this is totally on the industry and the socioeconomic model at large. It's now possible to engage in these scams with even a small ammount of resources, but it's precisely because the bar had been set really low. Even the richest and most influential companies have fooled consumers and generally gotten away with it. It happens on other industries too, executives will run companies bankrupt for a couple of extraordinarily good fiscal quarters on their curriculum and huge bonuses. Now we have this sort of lower level and hyperspecialized scams. But the root of the issue is that the ones with power to regulate the markets and punish frauds are not interested in doing so, as they are often profiting from it themselves in one way or another.
@@stuartmorley6894 You've got something wrong there. It did look real enough to anyone who played enough games - not with what the trailers did show, it was honestly expectable to be a scam along the lines of Infestation Survivor Stories (formerly WarZ) - with maybe better graphics or a few differing mechanics. You can't deny that they did both: Positively surprise us with releasing anything in the first place - but also negatively surprise us by somehow delivering the worst extraction shooter possible instead of the most bare bone survival game possible. For the industry I fully agree. Even tho I'd argue that the negative things are mainly at consumers fault either way - It happens over and over again for what now? 15 years almost? People go with too high expectations into releases from companies that we know won't deliver a non game breaking bugged game to complain about it. People pre-order the newest release of a game from companies where we know it takes years until it gets content rich and further developed its own identity above basic and complain about it either way. People on top pre-order the Deluxe versions of games just to complain that the first DLC/DLCs they get aren't what they expected them to be (except that it could've been expected if people would've paid attention at the previous game they've played for countless of hours). We even see the issue of live service at this point, as people buy the next game, just to complain as they're disappointed because it doesn't have as much stuff as the previous title that got constantly updated for 5+ years. And I don't see anything changing about it, apart from companies either dying over time (usually those that don't really deserve it) or they just continue to do it as it works regardless for them.
Nothing ever shakes the gaming industry. The amount of gullibility and susceptibility in this industry - both on the part of what the public will believe, and on the part of what employees will tolerate - is unprecedented.
I was watching some older videos and watched this one, then remembered Fntastic did another kick starter for a new game they was so called working on. And somehow, it got 50 backers but was canceled due to lack of funding . It was called Escape Factory.
Even though you never respond to comments, you did a great job here Kira. I've followed this journey with you since your first video on this game. I knew I'd see a big vid from you explaining the whole thing again, and I'm sure many are glad.
It's funny seeing this alongside Palworld, a game that seemingly came out of nowhere that had a lot of people against it for being too close to people's precious pokemon, and mockingly called it pokemon with guns, but people played it and what do you know?
The warning signs are still there, like the fact that the devs never finish their games. If anything, feels like people are eager to raise it up as evidence that the day before was a fluke, that these scams are not the norm and they are smart people.
@@LuizAlexPhoenixyeah, but with Palworld they actually delivered a game. We got an open world, we got a game with an interesting and fun mix of mechanics, we got decent-enough graphics that they didn’t lie to us about… they delivered. More work needs to be done, but we’ve gotten something that we can enjoy as-is.
@DragoEpyon Generally depends on how competitive the market is. An open world Zombie survival mmo, or in the case of Palworld, An Ark-like pokemon coop, are extremely niche types of games. So when put forth they get the spotlight. It's been this way for awhile since your average consumer in any given industry, can't be bothered to do their own research.
@@DragoEpyon the first step in being able to play a game is not getting soft locked all the time. You can pick up Palworld rn and go to Level 50, unlock all upgrades and beat all Early Access bosses. Most features like breeding are fully functional and bug fixes are already coming.
It was genuinely surprising for Valve to make such a monumentous decision to auto-refund all 200,000 copies at their own expense just down to how collosal of a scam the game was. Biggest W Valve has ever done, and probably the only time they'll ever do something like this.
It wasn't at their own expense, it was out of the money that was in escrow. Also, personally I think Steam shouldn't have refunded anyone after the two hour mark. There were so many warnings about this game from so many avenues, and yet people still flocked to the game. They deserve to lose their money at that point.
@@C0ldD1rective Victim blaming was never designed to fit around video game scams. That term comes from a completely different, actually heinous crime. If people ignore the warnings that huge content creators are giving out, they absolutely deserve it.
@xxkillbotxx7553 Lmao. No. You can victim blame anyone in anything. A scam. A murder. A sexual crime. You're being pathetically specific and obtuse at the same time. Just because someone isn't chronically online, doesn't mean they deserve to be robbed.
@@C0ldD1rective My brother in Christ, if you are about to jump off a bridge because someone told you there is treasure at the bottom of the river, and thousands of people are telling you you're stupid, do you deserve sympathy when you inevitable crack your head on the bottom of the riverbed? No. Lol.
So pleased you’ve done a comprehensive video on this, your content appears in most other channels who speak on it but you called this out way back when
Really, really good work Kira! Loving how you show the sources and articles in the video, well structured and (as far as I can tell) well researched! Also a very easy voice to listen to and good audio quality made it a breeze to just listen all the way through. Just wanted to give some thumbs up and positive reactions to the hard work!
The devs really remind me of former US senator/representative George Santos. Con men who had been conning for a long time. This was just supposed to be another con on their long list of cons but this one went too well. As a result they suddenly had a lot more eyes on them and couldn't get away with it.
@@disregardthat yeah totally. I'm deranged for disliking an old senile maniac that has ruined a great economy, involved us in three wars, causing the deaths of American citizens, and won't command his officials to execute the law and secure our southern border which is the largest human trafficking operation since the Atlantic slave trade, if not larger. 6 million and counting. Totally deranged for disliking a person like that 😅🤦
This whole thing is like a smaller scale version of Theranos. It started out with big ideas, vision and genuine belief in the idea. At some point it became clear that everything was going to go to shit, but instead of admitting that, reorienting and clearly communicating so solutions could be found, they just kept down the same path and took to lying about what was really going on to maintain the facade. And like Elizabeth Holmes they seem to show no remorse for what they have done, instead just pretending it never happened. Whether it is sociopathy or just enormous ego I guess we'll never know.
I don't understand how anyone could believe some random ass studio was somehow cooking a game that looked as good or better than a AAA game like The Division 2? The way they kept delaying the game and refusing to show any footage was a clear sign they waited until the last few months to actually start making the game because the trailer got far too much traction.
The thing that I can't get over with this controversy was what the hype was around. Even if this game performed *exactly* as advertised, THE DAY BEFORE was a totally derivative, unoriginal-looking zombie apocalypse survival shooter with the same drab greyish-brownish aesthetic as hundreds of other games. I think consumers need to reflect on how low their standards for artistic originality have sunk to have hyped themselves up over something that never looked all that worthwhile in the first place.
This. Is. Awesome. Thank you! A friendly amendment to your great analogy (1:05:07): The Day Before was like paying for a 65" TV, but finding in the box a case of sardines with 3 cans missing-and 27 months after the expiration date.
This is top notch content. Kira brings it once again with his slight northern accent curling round every word, delivering each punch with brutal efficiency. Fear him.
We as gamers should just not hype games up until a playable version is in our hands. We've all been mislead, burned and made a fool of far too many times with the cycle repeating.
I'm gonna take this opportunity to recommend the Metro 2033 books. They are absolutely phenomenal and add alot more context and weight to the games. Artyom is one of my favorite protagonists and it's really cool seeing the world through his naive eyes
@@bigdaddydons6241cannot recommend 2034 and 2035. 2034 is just a flow of underdeveloped thoughts of the writer with some signs of writers unhealthy moves in mind. And 2035 is full bucket of shit personally from author. Like I don't understand why the writer focused so much on describing disgusting views or senses, why he needed to fill the book with anti-communist (projecting to anti-russian) schizophrenia and etc. Like he lost himself what the book was about or he was just on drugs while writing. 2033 is the only one he wrote somewhat solid and then broke really bad
I swear, these two seem to think we're all Dory from Finding Nemo, that they can promise or say whatever they feel like, and delete videos and disable comments, and that our memory is so short-term that we'll just completely forget whatever mistakes were made and keep blindly following like lambs to the slaughter.
well. it worked on on a hundread of thousand of people. so they were right. they just focused on the most dumb most naive people. those who automaticly think that when someone says 'disinformation' that they are in the right. and anyone that says 'propaganda' must be pure of heart and have no propaganda to push themselves
Those scripted trailer videos with actors mimicking what they believe real players would talk like are the bane of my existence. The word cringe might be overused but those make my teeth grind with how embarrassing and condescending they are.
I'd just like to point out that there was another game that Valve stripped the 2h playtime refund window from (iirc battlefield 1), so The Day Before copied yet another studio's homework lmao
Terrific video as always. Next episode idea: the infamous Digital Homicide on how 2 brothers attempted to sue a RUclipsr and 100 Steam users for criticizing their games.
Someone also made a similar thing to showcase how relatively easy at least a surface-level game like TDB can be done, see channel Crimson, The Day After, parody, trailer. According to him he, a single person, made that in "just" around 300 hours from store-assets valuing around 15k bucks I think it was - and it actually looks better, seems to have dynamic snow and even melee and stuff (which TDB was entirely missing). He also uploaded a making of recently it seems, in case you're curious about a deep-dive into the UE engine I guess.
Gaming journalism at its finest. It's such a shame that folks do these kinds of things, harming themselves, staff, employees, publishers, outlets, funding/investors and the gaming community as a whole. Very much appreciate your work here, Kira. Keep at it, my friend!
This game is not on steam anymore. I found a developer called GI (no publisher yet) on steam with 3 TBA release games- one called The Day After- using the same font and similar style as this and 2 other apocalypse themed games- I kind of wonder if it's these 2 brothers.
I disagree about cyberpunk...they wanted to delay the game more but fans and the donors just wouldnt let them. I have every belief they could have made the gane they claimed were they givem more time...i believe it
"Asset flip" games are not bad in principle. They have always existed, and many beloved games are filled with assets that are used in countless other projects. The issue is when scammers use the current day high quality assets and enginework that is publicly available, and pretend that they have an actual game. Literally every industry has these same scammers, fake promises on a glamourous product have existed since civilization started forming.
Yeah, i believe it was Force Gaming that made a good video on this subject. Assets are there for a reason, they exist to help developers save time, maybe dont have the skills to create such things, and stuff of the sort. And when done correctly (Palworld as a recent example) most people will not care about the assets being bought/used. But when u just simply slam 500 assets together, and you claim to have spent all this time making this huge game, you end up looking stupid.
It’s like Gaming Plagiarism lol. No one would fault an author for citing a quote in an essay, and no one should fault a developer for an honest use of pre-made assets. It’s the “passing another’s work off as your own” that folks got a distaste for.
The term “asset flip” is typically misused, but it’s supposed to mean a game made wholecloth with prebuilt assets and stitched together with one, maybe two pages worth of code to just barely hold it together. The usage of assets itself isn’t an inherent problem, the problem is using them in such a capacity where it’s the game development equivalent of flipping a house.
"Asset flip" games absolutely are bad in principle. Asset flips are, by their very nature, just people lazily slapping a bunch of good looking assets together to trick people in to buying a steaming turd. That's why they're called asset flips
Asset flips are bad in principle because as the name implies, it's people using assets pre made as the entire basis of their games to make a quick buck. *But* using pre-made assets is not bad in itself, pre-made assets are there to be used in support of your own project.
It sucks that a lot of the people defending Fntastic were doing it for laudable reasons, at least early in the drama. In addition, the situation spoiled the opinions of so many potential indie project supporters that it poisoned the well for other, legitimate small studios trying to stake a place in the market. Low lives like these always tread on goodwill and aspirations, thankfully most of them are usually as incompetent as they are unscrupulous.
I remember I was called everything under the sun for calling this a piece of shit scam game 1-2 years ago, so I hope those people couldn't get their refund and that they feel proper sadness now, because you could tell this was a fucking scam back then, you didn't need it to be released to see that it was a scam.
I was part of the optimistic skepticism camp. I never take things at face value and wait for games to release before even thinking of buying. The thing that put me in the "This is probably a scam" camp is the bait and switch for prop night.
So this is a somewhat odd request but is it possible you could look into the new vampire the masquerade game that's coming out cause i personally find the way its going is suspicious at least from whats been released
I find it funny how they also pretended that Mytona was a separate entity, when it IS actually also Fntastic. Apparently they're planning to make more games....lol Its also alleged that there *may* have been money from governmental bodies as well. So it may not just be the people they planned to scam along the way
Hey Kira, just wanted to say the amount of effort you put into these videos is crazy. It's well researched and structured and the presentation is phenomenal. Keep it up!
Cyberpunk 2077 is by far one of the best games I've played now though, the improvements vs day one is a night and day difference. 2077 is 100% worth the money it costs and I've done 3 play throughs so far without any real problems at all.
watching this is actually reminding me a TON of the palworld drama where that game blatantly stole from larger studios but made tiny changes or used their own assets to try and deflect accusations of theft despite also having a history of other games with even more blatant theft, but because they're an indie studio (and becausew people have hate boners for the company palworld was being accused of stealing from) and because people thought it looked fun and were willing to overlook the theft for fun, they were wildly defended by people using the same talking points as defenders in this video used... i wasnt familiar with the entire history of this game, but this was a great watch because it really elaborated on the points of stress that i did know about and introduced even more that further explained peoples frustrations with it before and after release. awesome stuff :D
Took the term "fake it till you make it" literally. Got called out for faking it, then blamed you because they couldn't make it.
Fake it until you take it...
this term implies that you eventually make it and your earlier lies don't matter in the end. You lie in your resume to get an interview and on the actual interview you demonstrate that you actually do have the skills (even if you faked number of years of experience).
These scammers never made it, instead of "make" there was "take".
I think they could have made a Kickstarter for this since it got insanely popular quickly and they could have made something decent at the very least if these brothers weren't completely idiotic scumbags
Nice pic
@@rosskarlson4272 howdy pardner
Steam and Valve aren't squeaky clean, but that was one of the biggest fucking W's to auto-refund people
By automatically refunding, they absolutely did scrub themselves squeaky clean.
If you disagree, I would like evidence or arguments contrary to my hypothesis. Unless you think Gabe needs to pull up and hand you an additional fiver, offer to blow you and share an eight-ball, what else could they do? They had no idea that this game was a dumpster fire the size of JUPITER until it launched, same as us. If they had any foreknowledge, and yet not taken action, then I could see a case.
@@tripolarmdisorder7696 I think they mean squeaky clean as a company in general, not specifically in terms of this scam.
Chill?
@@tripolarmdisorder7696praise gaben and geraldo
@@tripolarmdisorder7696I think they meant squeaky clean in terms of other stuff they do unrelated to this scam of a game
In terms of just this scam in particular, yea they're absolutely squeaky clean, they handled it as well as possible I think
I love how the two guys constantly keep that fake smile and do the same hand movements whenever they are talking, making Oblivion NPC's feel real in comparison.
It really felt unnerving with the lighting how it seemed they lacked eyebrows
That was my first thought when I saw these dudes, absolut NPC behavior
So many years, so much energy, in trying to scam people. It amazes me.
Nomad sky.
Maybe they were the real asset flip all along.
great documentary but just a small note: by the time the game was about to release they DID get accused of asset flip, from that lengthy 10 minute gameplay video of nothing happening people had noticed several of the models looked like models in the unreal asset store
i love seeing new fps games and the M416 is the same exact model from unity every single time
@@FedkaSlovanichI mean the HK416 is a real rifle. You don’t really get that much artistic license with putting real-world weapons in games.
@@thatphatbaby the problem is they use the exact same model from the page, they dont even modify the texture
@@FedkaSlovanich Of all the extra models you could have been upset about, the nicely textured, real life rifle is the one you complain about?
@@xxkillbotxx7553 because its a free model, everyone uses it. it would be like paying for a Ferrari and it has a ford steering wheel.
Having a shit laptop that barely runs minecraft has generally saved me from getting hyped up and then buying games like this
By the time TDB go viral, I'm under addiction of Project Zomboid, a REAL MMO Zombie Survival. Still waitting for B42
Having a brain that even semi-functions is enough. I have played games for 25 years, buy a lot of games and it's one of my main hobbies, and the game purchases I regretted, I probably can count on one hand.
Just stay away from the scummy publishers, stay away from always online looter shooter live service hero shooter battle royale who knows what else buzzword buzzword nonsense and you already got rid of 90% of trash.
I stick near-exclusively to singleplayer games, and they, even in the AAA space, have been delivering absolute banger after absolute banger.
@@youtube-kit9450job!!!
@@youtube-kit9450get one
Protip: avoid game hype, and buy games 1 year after release or when they’re heavily discounted. I got to play the FIXED version of Arkham Knight and it was loads of fun, and I only paid $3 for the base game and all the DLC. Honestly, there are so many great games out there, there’s no need to play new releases.
Wow. The employees really are the real victims here. Fining them for "poor quality work?????" That doesn't even sound legal!
MR KRABS:
There's gonna be a few changes around 'here! Everytime I catch you goofin' off, I'm gonna charge ye Fer it!
This
They're based in Russia. You think they have laws to protect workers?
It’s totally legal. And a good reason. Employment is at will. If I hire and the employee does a terrible job why am I required to continue to pay them? In this case , maybe it’s totally unfair and wrong, but as a reason to terminate employment generally it’s entirely legal and common. If employers were chained to poor performers forever, they’d be sooo reluctant to ever hire. That’s the case in many European countries and people struggle to find permanent work and just temp forever.
@@lisaj2269 idk about Russia but in the us your employer cannot find you for not doing a good job lol.
Why was it even called "The Day Before" ? Shouldn't it have been called "The Day After" ? on account of the whole POST-apocalypse thing?
Why are you trying to make sense of a scam
What was funny is after the Day Before Crashed and burned Valve had a "Day after" sale for survival games.
@@sadfatdragon9529 lmao
Because there was already a game CALLED that perhaps?
There was also a TV movie called “The Day After” as well.
I love how devs that you have called out over there years labeled you as a scamtuber. This vid right here is absolute fire and shows how you take the time do your research and inform the public of due dillengence. Thanks kira keep doing what you and all the others like bigfry callium etc do.
i agree
Technically it's correct, he is a scamtuber, he's a RUclipsr who covers scams
@@everythingponyNice way to put it! 😂
@@everythingponysomething like a "garbage man" is a person that disposes of garbage
The company was registered in Russia. They transferred most of their assets there right just before the crash.
And we know we can't trust the Russians.
If a professional video game studio says “shit happens” they shouldn’t even be legally allowed to sell u a product
and they aren't!
Same vibes as "It's better than nothing".
Nah people definitely deserve that response if they actually bought this game 😭😭
😂😂
lollllll
I was waiting for the final twist, that they weren't even brothers. Seemed in line with all the other scams, lies and deceits.
Them not being brothers and learned to be lovers would have been the most beautiful thing. The idea of two scammers claiming to be related when they are not. Getting a bit intimate with the person you tell people is your brother while scamming the hell out of thousands.
The moment I heard that even the team was surprised that the game would be an MMO.... that's a huge incompetence and ignorance.
Did they thought that there is an MMO checkbox in Unreal Engine settings? Yes there are MMO kit on marketplace, but it is not as simple as connecting some cables or modify some codes, especially at the middle of the project and bought assets! Even a senior expert programmer would not want to deal with that. I couldn't imagine the stress whoever had to deal with this nightmare.
Convo must have been hilarious. Devs walks in expecting a normal job but meanwhile get tasked with juggling an mmo with guns, loot, trading, thousands of npcs, shop systems etc etc 😂
And half the work is lend from the unity store so everything has to be fixed and checked for potential gamebreaking bugs 😂😂
no, its not incompetence, its malevolence. the brothers are russians. they are vile creatures that wanted to cause as much misery to the people they were baiting into their studio as possible. hiding their game and fining people for making mistakes based on that hiding was just another method of cruelty
Guy went home and Anhero’d 😂😂😂
MMOs are a really big investment too, anytime some small studio talks about doing one it tends to be pretty shady. It took Blizzard millions to make World of Warcraft and years of development.
@@Th3Kingism and large ongoing investment thats why the only sustainable ones use a sub model with maybe a limited free trial type thing those buy once models don't work unless your new world and have bezos bucks
Whether or not the players were scammed, the employees and volunteers were ABSOLUTELY scammed. Protip #1: Don't tolerate working for free unless you're volunteering at a non-profit. Protip #2: If your job is regularly TAKING money from you, for any reason, you're being scammed. Run.
Non-profits should still pay people. Wages aren't part of profits, they're expenses
I like to thanks Ubisoft for years of training and disappointment to prepare me for this moment.
I think Jim Sterling and YongYea did that for me myself...
@@crazyluigi6664Yong Yea is such a coward, afraid of doing anything but going with the crowd. I suspect he doesn't actually have any thoughts of his own, especially since his content is just basically reading articles out loud. That said, at least he's doing it openly instead of trying to pass the content of his own.
@@nomindseye Everyone that covers news used Articles.
SKill Up and Yong 💀@@crazyluigi6664
Skull and bones is the newest dissapointment for me. Dont get me wrong, its a lot of fun, but they cancelled the single player and the 5v5 mode in order to turn it into a forced online forced pvpve game. I was so hyped for that single player campaign, ubisoft always foes naval combat well and it sounded like "black flag without the annoying land quests"
When a game dev announce a change in game engine, especially when it is already under development, it is always a major red flag.
Mostly but not always
@@pendingchange3776 True, but it is frequent enough that it warrants being a red flag
Yes, for sure. About 98% of the time anyway. That 2% when it's not is for games like Palworld which apparently did the same thing but the game actually released and was it was a good game despite that engine change.
So, statistically speaking, when that happens, alarm bells should be ringing in your head as chances are high that it's a scam.
Yeah I completely agree . But apparently we are talking about people who can't spot scam when it's smacking them in the face from the start
Well, there is Palworld. It managed to not fuck it all up, surprisingly.
Before I watched this video I had coincidentally watched a video on Victorian match factories and the horrific conditions suffered by workers in those factories; Including 16 hour work days, no holidays and fining employees for mistakes. Sound familiar? Fntastic recreated the working conditions of a Victorian factory, conditions that are illegal in pretty much every Western country because of activists like Charles Dickens who spoke out about the horrors of working in these places. But the worst part is that they got away with it.
Conditions of Victorian matchstick factories sounds like the niche topic video I’d be in to! Was there anything that you found most shocking?
OMG I think I saw that video, too...
the problem with working in a victorian match factory is that nothing ever 'sparks' your imagination.
Lucifer Jaw?
Welcome to Eastern Europe, I guess.
This is no longer about a _game,_ this is about two people exploiting young and hopeful people by abusing and taking advantage of them. Absolutely disgusting and unacceptable.
*PS: What kind of psychotic individuals would fine their own unpaid employees for not being able to comply with their absurd standards?*
_For all those privileged smartasses questioning the intelligence of the “volunteers,” it’s obvious you’ve never found yourself in a similar situation where the only way to make a living and gain necessary curriculum experience is to work for a company with questionable morals. I did it, I didn’t enjoy it. But when desperation hits, one feels like there are no other alternatives available._
same happened to starbound yet starbound is still sold on steam even today.
0p
its the story about two russians being russians, their kind are all scammers.
And yet so absolutely easy to see coming if you have a brain.
"Abusing"
Even Steam knew it would be less costly to just outright do a full refund to everyone, than to leave this shitshow in peoples' library and have them not able to refund down the road.
But they shouldn't have refunded it .. if you bought this you deserved it
@@reapersasmr5483agreed
@@reapersasmr5483people who can afford to file a lawsuit would disagree. im on the fence about it tbh
@@reapersasmr5483 Absolutely not. That just encourages more scams. Stop blaming the end user for everything.
Lmfao Kira going in DRY on these fools. They had this coming, and Kira called it like YEARS IN ADVANCE. Hahahaha.
No amount of lube is going to help them
This is Kira's victory lap. A big ol' "I told you so!"
I mean, I don't blame him, he was calling this at least a year ago
everyone that doesn't play roblox or fortnite could see it years in advance. But you're right they did have this coming.
Kira is the embodiment of, "When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But when I'm right, I'm fucking RIGHT."
My favorite part of all of this was the "Live gameplay" trailer with the live comms. Like I know they we're trying to sell it as a coop shooter, so they couldn't have comms like "IseehimIseehimIseehimIseehim, he's oneshot, oney, he's cracked, downdowndowndowndown!", but that would've made it so much better
yeah id love to see one with realism one day fr "G0d D@mN iT DUDE WHY DIDNT YOU GIVE HEAL!!!
How do I get a job as a fake gameplay voice actor? I work for cheap and I can make myself sound way more convincing than these guys. I can even bring a couple of my friends. C'mon, I really need the cash
It's mental that you were so far ahead of this years ago. Now everyone wants to cover it. Fair play mate
Kira doesn't miss
They're back with another scam now 😅
The final argument of this video raises a very good point. If you're a 25 year old developer and took a role at the studio, after all this fallout you only have two choices when looking for new jobs: list the 3 years' experience at Fntastic on your CV and hope the disaster of The Day Before doesn't reflect poorly on you, or leave it off your CV and try to break into the industry fresh with nothing to show for the last few years. I don't envy being in that position at all
But it is also a situation you put yourself and as a wise someone once said “play shitty games win shitty prizes”
@@peterjalgalado2243what? It should not fall to some poor fresh hire to shoulder the responsibilities of their bosses’ failures. The people who worked there had no idea that they were going to be used to drive a scam.
@@peterjalgalado2243That makes absolutely zero sense and you should feel bad for making such a terrible argument. I'll never in a million years understand how empathetically bankrupt of a human being you have to be in order to blame the victims who were taken advantage of, over the actual people coordinating the scam. Just an insane thought process.
Kira, four times during the creation of this video: "FINALLY that's done. Wait, what happened? Oh bloody hell...."
Bro thinks, Kira is a male name...
@@Puxi Your comment is both incorrectly punctuated and adds no value to what was said in any way. If you're gonna try and be a troll at least try something creative.
@@Puxi* 👏 Bro, 👏 thinks, 👏 Kira, 👏 is, 👏 a, 👏male, 👏name
@@DavidSoucieIt wasn't even relevant either. Could have at least saved it for a comment with PRONOUNS involved.
@@Puxi
My name is Yoshikage Kira. I'm 33 years old. My house is in the northeast section of Morioh, where all the villas are, and I am not married. I work as an employee for the Kame Yu department stores, and I get home every day by 8 PM at the latest. I don't smoke, but I occasionally drink. I'm in bed by 11 PM, and make sure I get eight hours of sleep, no matter what. After having a glass of warm milk and doing about twenty minutes of stretches before going to bed, I usually have no problems sleeping until morning. Just like a baby, I wake up without any fatigue or stress in the morning. I was told there were no issues at my last check-up. I'm trying to explain that I'm a person who wishes to live a very quiet life. I take care not to trouble myself with any enemies, like winning and losing, that would cause me to lose sleep at night. That is how I deal with society, and I know that is what brings me happiness. Although, if I were to fight I wouldn't lose to anyone.
This takes “but wait it gets worse” to a whole other level. Thanks for making this. It was very informative and put together very well. I’m sure it took months to make. Great work.
If anyone is wondering, they have a new game out, or “coming soon” Escape Factory….
I'm so happy to see that one of my favorite RUclips channels covers a documentation made by the company where i work. Quite crazy because i'm from Germany and never thought that our video about The Day Before would reach the whole world 😅
Great work. Hopefully, even more people will see the video :)
I like the added bonus of roasting the people that defended Fntastic online for free by showing their social media posts.
Between Kira "killing" _The Day Before_ and _Elyria,_ Bobvids "killing" _Supernormal_ and _Stray Souls,_ and Callum Upton and Josh Strife Hayes and Steph Sterling all fighting the tireless fights, the games industry is still healing from the years and years of exploitation. Please continue making it unsafe for charlatans.
You are more important than you know.
Sadly scammers will never go away. But yeah, you can at least make it harder for them.
I would take "making them miserable and wasting their time and effort" over getting them to go away.
If (the present-day zeitgeist of) Steam Greenlight is a circle of Hell, then they're not allowed to suffer any less than the rest of us.
Please do not mention that moron Sterling in the same sentance as the others. They're a moralist Puritan that seeks to censor or abolish art that does not align with their politicals or worldview. They are no friend of either the Industry or audiences as a whole.
The Shadow Cabal strikes again
@@calus7958 "Censor" or "abolish"? Sure, sure, snowflake...
Wipe your mouth before mentioning Steph Starling (thank god for she).
*At the end of the video, you said the brothers were going to be coming back to scam again & you were right. The last few days they have been extremely active on Twitter & other social media, like RUclips, showing off their new game "Escape Factory", which is hilarious when you think about it because of their "volunteer" employee's... I really hope you cover their return as "Fantasic 2.0"*
As an aspiring Indie dev myself, companies like this make things incredibly difficult for legit and passionate developers gaining the trust and support of gamers. Not all developers are greedy like this guys. It's not what the indie scene is about. These people are scumbags.
What I love about the whole The Day Before shit storm is the fact this was announced and teased for years fighting for validation only to end up as a scam like everyone predicted. Palworld looked too good to be real and came off as a mobile ad. It has a smaller dev team, worked on it for several years as well and also moved everything to UE5. Except Palworld was real and is actually now a victim of its own success.
Also hey now, lets not call Overwatch 2 a review bomb. It was the first time in 30 years that customers could leave feedback on a Blizzard product that was public without worrying about getting banned. It was hilarious and FAR overdue.
I was surprised palworld turned out ok. Hopefully those devs take the foundation they have and actually build upon it.
@@sadfatdragon9529 Ok? The creatures rotate as rigid models.
My very first animation job was at a studio run much like it sounds Fntastic was run. It sucks and it sucks HARD. I can't imagine how many in house "morale meetings" these poor employees had to suffer as the guys in charge fed them nonsense about how they all just have to come together a little bit harder to make this dream a reality or whatever.
On a positive note, this happened more than 10 years ago for me, and I am still working in the animation industry. Maybe not at the highest level ever, but I have managed to stay on this career path despite the absolute worst possible start.
There is nothing more easily exploited than young inexperienced people who care so so much about about an industry like this, and who will pour blood sweat and tears into a project, just hoping it will come together in the end. They genuinely have my sympathies.
Exploiting somebodies passion like that is extremely gross.
Beware young people of anybody hiring based on "passion". Those guys always just want to break your back for their own benefits.
It's an absolute nightmare and I can't imagine how many brilliant talents are being snuffed by these companies that take them in only to drain them of all of their aspirations. Its awful, but I'm afraid there won't be any significant change, not anytime soon. Just a hunch
the whippings will continue until morale improves.
holy shit it's you, do I get an autograph?
That’s the only reason I get sad at game controversies like this…
There must’ve been some underpaid (or not paid at all in some cases) unspoken artists or devs that wanted to actually do a good job. :(
Like, the stories where some publisher or ceo has unrealistic expectations. Mismanagement due to greed or ignorance.
Where it’s a miracle that a game was even shipped out because of some poor shmuck’s blood, sweat and tears. And then that dev team shutters because their work is slammed because it’s predictably garbage while the publisher goes on to murder another dev team.
The description of the game pivoting in every direction gave me flashbacks from a brief time I worked at "Cybertime Games" company on their shooter.
Firts it was supposed to be Rocket League-like arena shooter with guns.
Then they wanted to make Call of Duty instead. They scrapped half of the project, pivoted.
Then they decided it's gonna be a base siedge team-vs-team with war vehicles.
Then they pivoted to basicallu Unreal (game).
And the "game designer" refused to put even 1 page of it in writing or think through the systems. It was basically "make them have teams! There is some code in there somewhere from the days of football arena." or "Make them have force fields!". No details on if/how they are supposed to regenerate, mitigate all damage or % of it, etc. He "Had a clear vision in his head, so didn't need to write a Design Document."
The game is called Gun Blaze on steam and it's pretty much in a state when I left that team behind (lasted 1 month in that circus).
The positive reviews are hilarious to read😂
@floofiekun1875 I mean, I literally catapulted out of there after a month. And it was years ago :D
I gave a look at the reviews and they did deliver! lol
Here's one, without any editing:
"Revolutionary, this is REDEFINING the FPS genre as a whole.
Take notes, [INSERT DEVELOPER NAME HERE], this is how you do it RIGHT."
@@phosspatharios9680I had to jump onto the steam page to check this and just wow, it's almost painful to see
I looked at the reviews, there is four, and I'm trying to figure out if two of them, posted days apart, are contracting each other or if it's a typo.
Hold up. Read the OLDER one closer and it spelt out the number, so it's the one I was certain had to be right, until I checked the description page, then I realized the review contradicts ITSELF. Again, the number is spelt out so it's not a typo.
Edit: Just how do you do that? I'm confused.
@@phosspatharios9680Thought you were exaggerating or the [INSERT DEVELOPER NAME HERE] was fake, but it's not.
I told everyone this would be a major scam, and I got major shit in the comment section. Someone even going as far as to pay me 100$ if it was a scam.
I want my 100$.
Where’s your hundred bucks! 🤣
Outstanding job investigating this, Kira. Impressive work on the editing as well. Thanks for putting it together.
Ah, The Scam Before.
I remember reading first news about this game, and without even seeing the trailer and gamepkay videos, it was a very obvious scam.
I mean, those guys literally promised everything everywhere all at once.
Without any meaningful background, with a team of like dozen people in a shady shack.
But I guess people saw those ever-so-lucrative words like "zombie survival open world with multiplayer and crafting and looting and..." and went all in for it.
Not going to blame them, yet I highly advise to do a little bit of research for any projevt you're interested in.
Why NOT rip ppl off? They're so STUPID!
You're such a genius..
I did my homework, I watched kiras video on it a few years ago
Said the guy who preordered the Diablo 4 GOTY Omega Premium Edition
You know that game devs can show a product which is not true to the final game legally right? I guess you dont since you call the game a scam. The game was not a scam
If they released the game for $2-$5 per copy, I doubt too many people would be pissed off about how bad it was. Asking $40 for such a broken game just makes it instantly feel like they have been scammed.
Should've been free to play with that few contents
that's because it was a scam.
@@themur880 Yeah, but they could have created a scam that produced more orders and less refunds.
Every 15 minutes after the 45 minute mark, I was thinking: Alright, this is the end.
But ... Every time it got worse. When it seem over, it continued.
Yeah this. There were several moments where I was sure the video was coming to a close, then just, in shock that the seeker was still near the middle.
the brothers are russians, making sure things get worse is their species's specialty
I just hit my first checkpoint in the vid - this is gonna keep happening you’re saying? I still don’t think I’m ready :o
@@xchronox0 Given he said towards the end that it was the fourth time he had to change it pretty late into the process it wouldn't surprise me if that's a product of him thinking it was coming to a close too.
@@Mady0 Even the video creator thinks it's almost done. 😂
Fun fact, the first Division game did it years before either the sequel or The Day Before did it.
Ubistoft had this weird scripted gameplay trailer, people mocked them for it, and they still repeated it with Div 2.
At least the Division games are actual, good games.
@@anzaca1 Oh, I love the Division games. I hate how it's been somewhat abandoned over the last couple of years. I know that they still support 2, but I'd like to see a new game.
At least CD Projekt Red were dedicated enough to fix and improve 2077 years after release. Fntastic abandoned The Day Before within a few weeks!
Still difficult to believe that people older than 16 years old believed in this game.
This is why I strongly disagree that this "harmed the gaming industry".
Some people NEED to burn their hands to learn, and this was a big enough event to wake up a lot of people. Not just gamers, but devs and distributors too.
There's so much wrong in the industry today that any wake-up call is a win.
Homie, some people still believe in earth 2
I remember my friend told me about this game and he was pretty hyped about it. While I agreed that it looked good, I had my reservations. Like I wasn’t overly hyped about it like he was but I didn’t quite realize something was wrong.
Some people just watch a cool trailer, wishlist the game and then buy it when it comes out. Not everyone goes on social media to watch videos about it or discuss it. The people who defended it are another matter, of course. They are just naively optimistic or unforgivingly ignorant.
@@nicholascauton9648 My "wait for reviews first" mindset serves me well for years.
The effort and work Kira put in his videos about the game is more than the devs putting in work in their game.
Actually, the devs put a _lot_ of work into this game.
The problem is that most of it got thrown away, because the Fntastic brothers changed their goals or fancy wildly, on a frequent basis
(search for stories from former Day Before or Fntastic devs, which is what I am summarizing below)
These extreme swings in direction often depended on whatever AAA game they played last. Even if it was a completely different genre or contradicts that they said previously they wanted.
Some pulled long nights over a week to finish a feature that the founders insisted on having. Only when that got ready to turn it in, the brothers said they didn't need it anymore because they are going a different direction. Or worse, forgetting they asked for that feature in the first place, "so what's all this about?".
I think one dev said that only like a 1/5th of the total stuff developed or assembled for the game finally made it to the final product.
And they were refused requests to have enough test servers/machines to simulate busy net activity, so a lot of their net code only truly got tested when it was released. That, and the wild shifts in direction all through the development means that they pretty much had no time for testing, because they couldn't keep up with throwing away stuff and developing what ever wild new thing that came on their desk
Not to mention that the turnover rate was, not surprisingly, was high
truth 🙏
I still can't believe people fall for these scams with all these insane promises they have no way to deliver on. (And as you mentioned, Prop Night was pretty much Diet Dead by Daylight and lifted so much of its base concepts. Even the maps were similar. Never understood why people ever liked that game.)
Ikr the game play looked fake as all hell. I actually think that some gamers are just built to be tricked.
I refunded that prop game after 25 mins, it was blech
There is a cheap buy in for most of the target audience, bored people with disposable income. These people serve to draw in more, compounded by influencers, media and so on. Then it gains traction and everyone is too afraid to pull out.
Oh man, in "Russian Facebook" I saw a bunch of comments saying "I liked it and you are all just haters, it's an early access game and it will get better"
I was so baffled
People liked prop night initially because there wasn't really a good alternative on the market for prop hunt type games. Either you played it within GMod or you played one of the many shallow clones of Gmod prop hunt. So people were interested in a more fleshed out, polished (Gmod is ultra jank), prop hunt experience. Plus Dead by Daylight was in the hight of its popularity and asymmetrical multi-player games had yet to fully flood the market. So prop night hit all the right checkboxes for immediate success.
Of course once people realized the game was as deep as a 1 inch puddle and Fntastic had no interest in supporting the game post launch, its player base dwindled and died.
"Running outta fuel"
"Great man, awesome".
These guys should have politicians. They would have actually been successful. There are way too many politicians with documented lies, but with the introduction of, "alternative facts," people actually eat those lies right up.
Amazing story. Kira called it from the start, so many people deluded themselves into believing that this game was real despite there never being any evidence for that it's unreal. Great video!
Kira casually dropping a movie while I'm doing my weekly meal prep THANKS DUDE! I have been loving the content on this game, and you've been following this for ages!
Man, I need to get back into meal prep.
So basically, the brothers okayed too much GTA and Red Dead Online, The Division 2, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Baldur's Gate 3 and hired several inexperienced employees and told them, make this a zombie MMO. Then they changed course and said, nah Its going to be a Tarkov clone.
Nah, they said “make a coop game” THEN said “make an MMO”
Worse than this sadly. The new developers where from eastern European nations where there were few options for dev work. They mostly were remote employees. They then paid them more than they would get in their home nations. With all of this, they were misstreated with unethical work hours, unpaid overtime, etc... they also used continent to monitor those people such that going to the bathroom could get them a phone call or fired. 😢
It feels like there's so, so many failed games that - when the retrospective comes out - it's revealed it was poor management that kept hopping genres after they went home and played a new release over the weekend, hopping engines and forcing devs to start over from scratch, or pushing a gameplay concept devs had quickly realized wasn't feasible for years past the point that the game's course needed to be changed. Daikatana, Too Human, Duke Nukem, ME:Andromeda to an extent...all of those with the other accompanying problems of having that kind of management.
Still crazy to me how E3 is gone. That used to be the highlight of the year for game devs. We'd spend months creating builds of our games just for E3.
lol that still isn’t the end of the story. They have attempted to come back as Fantastic 2.0, and asked for crowdfunding for their planned new game/scam called Escape Factory…
Don't forget their prop hunt game
It's like every fade out for the lord of the rings movies. "oh okay THIS is the ending... no? there's more?"
This will happen again, I guarantee it. While these guys were absolute morons who fumbled their own scam, they clearly showed that this type of high profile scam works. It's just a matter of time before someone who actually knows what they're doing tries it again. Never has there been a better argument to not buy games day 1, but it will change nothing.
It happens all the time. Telling the same story every few months gets old, so it's not getting much coverage unless it's on a scale like this.
Hopefully this has shaken the gaming industry enough and set an unprecedented example. I can feel the gaming industry fall into ridiculous greed levers, but scams like this must be held accountable.
Not a chance. This isn't really about the industry. It's about a small team managing to hype a project and enough people either buying into it or not understanding how games work and are made. The owners managed to pay themselves handsomely for years while paying those making the game nothing. Gaming scams are going nowhere. Nothing about that original trailer looked real to anyone who plays a few games. But the promises obviously interested a lot of people. The ideas they were pushing would be a good idea for a game. The negative press seemed to actually give them extra oxygen. I'm sure a lot of people who bought the game at launch were doing it to gawp or see how bad it really was.
In terms of the actual industry learning to not oversell with early trailers or vertical slices that horse bolted a long time ago. It feels to me like it's actually got a tiny bit better but it's been an industry standard for almost as long as the industry has existed.
@@stuartmorley6894 I agree with the general idea but this is totally on the industry and the socioeconomic model at large. It's now possible to engage in these scams with even a small ammount of resources, but it's precisely because the bar had been set really low.
Even the richest and most influential companies have fooled consumers and generally gotten away with it. It happens on other industries too, executives will run companies bankrupt for a couple of extraordinarily good fiscal quarters on their curriculum and huge bonuses.
Now we have this sort of lower level and hyperspecialized scams. But the root of the issue is that the ones with power to regulate the markets and punish frauds are not interested in doing so, as they are often profiting from it themselves in one way or another.
Plenty of fools around.......................especially in the gaming community, unfortunately!
@@stuartmorley6894 You've got something wrong there.
It did look real enough to anyone who played enough games - not with what the trailers did show, it was honestly expectable to be a scam along the lines of Infestation Survivor Stories (formerly WarZ) - with maybe better graphics or a few differing mechanics.
You can't deny that they did both: Positively surprise us with releasing anything in the first place - but also negatively surprise us by somehow delivering the worst extraction shooter possible instead of the most bare bone survival game possible.
For the industry I fully agree. Even tho I'd argue that the negative things are mainly at consumers fault either way - It happens over and over again for what now? 15 years almost? People go with too high expectations into releases from companies that we know won't deliver a non game breaking bugged game to complain about it. People pre-order the newest release of a game from companies where we know it takes years until it gets content rich and further developed its own identity above basic and complain about it either way. People on top pre-order the Deluxe versions of games just to complain that the first DLC/DLCs they get aren't what they expected them to be (except that it could've been expected if people would've paid attention at the previous game they've played for countless of hours).
We even see the issue of live service at this point, as people buy the next game, just to complain as they're disappointed because it doesn't have as much stuff as the previous title that got constantly updated for 5+ years.
And I don't see anything changing about it, apart from companies either dying over time (usually those that don't really deserve it) or they just continue to do it as it works regardless for them.
Nothing ever shakes the gaming industry. The amount of gullibility and susceptibility in this industry - both on the part of what the public will believe, and on the part of what employees will tolerate - is unprecedented.
I was watching some older videos and watched this one, then remembered Fntastic did another kick starter for a new game they was so called working on. And somehow, it got 50 backers but was canceled due to lack of funding . It was called Escape Factory.
This happened to Watch Dogs too. Apparently the good graphics were purposely hidden.
Even though you never respond to comments, you did a great job here Kira. I've followed this journey with you since your first video on this game.
I knew I'd see a big vid from you explaining the whole thing again, and I'm sure many are glad.
I do respond to some comments, but it is just impossible to do it for the majority, or I'd have zero time to do anything else.
Thanks :)
It's funny seeing this alongside Palworld, a game that seemingly came out of nowhere that had a lot of people against it for being too close to people's precious pokemon, and mockingly called it pokemon with guns, but people played it and what do you know?
The warning signs are still there, like the fact that the devs never finish their games. If anything, feels like people are eager to raise it up as evidence that the day before was a fluke, that these scams are not the norm and they are smart people.
@@LuizAlexPhoenixyeah, but with Palworld they actually delivered a game. We got an open world, we got a game with an interesting and fun mix of mechanics, we got decent-enough graphics that they didn’t lie to us about… they delivered. More work needs to be done, but we’ve gotten something that we can enjoy as-is.
@@TheCrazyCapMaster The state of the video game consumer that they're happy to buy an unfinished game as long as it sort of functions.
@DragoEpyon Generally depends on how competitive the market is. An open world Zombie survival mmo, or in the case of Palworld, An Ark-like pokemon coop, are extremely niche types of games. So when put forth they get the spotlight.
It's been this way for awhile since your average consumer in any given industry, can't be bothered to do their own research.
@@DragoEpyon the first step in being able to play a game is not getting soft locked all the time.
You can pick up Palworld rn and go to Level 50, unlock all upgrades and beat all Early Access bosses. Most features like breeding are fully functional and bug fixes are already coming.
It was genuinely surprising for Valve to make such a monumentous decision to auto-refund all 200,000 copies at their own expense just down to how collosal of a scam the game was. Biggest W Valve has ever done, and probably the only time they'll ever do something like this.
It wasn't at their own expense, it was out of the money that was in escrow. Also, personally I think Steam shouldn't have refunded anyone after the two hour mark. There were so many warnings about this game from so many avenues, and yet people still flocked to the game. They deserve to lose their money at that point.
@@xxkillbotxx7553Victim blaming is the lowest thing you can do, and we're talking about a scam.
@@C0ldD1rective Victim blaming was never designed to fit around video game scams. That term comes from a completely different, actually heinous crime.
If people ignore the warnings that huge content creators are giving out, they absolutely deserve it.
@xxkillbotxx7553 Lmao. No. You can victim blame anyone in anything. A scam. A murder. A sexual crime.
You're being pathetically specific and obtuse at the same time. Just because someone isn't chronically online, doesn't mean they deserve to be robbed.
@@C0ldD1rective My brother in Christ, if you are about to jump off a bridge because someone told you there is treasure at the bottom of the river, and thousands of people are telling you you're stupid, do you deserve sympathy when you inevitable crack your head on the bottom of the riverbed?
No. Lol.
So pleased you’ve done a comprehensive video on this, your content appears in most other channels who speak on it but you called this out way back when
Really, really good work Kira!
Loving how you show the sources and articles in the video, well structured and (as far as I can tell) well researched!
Also a very easy voice to listen to and good audio quality made it a breeze to just listen all the way through.
Just wanted to give some thumbs up and positive reactions to the hard work!
Thanks :)
The devs really remind me of former US senator/representative George Santos. Con men who had been conning for a long time. This was just supposed to be another con on their long list of cons but this one went too well. As a result they suddenly had a lot more eyes on them and couldn't get away with it.
They remind me of Joe Biden, if his multiple personalities were split into two, but still retained his greed, dishonesty, and traitorous behavior.
@@A_Stereotypical_Heretic BDS
@@disregardthat yeah totally. I'm deranged for disliking an old senile maniac that has ruined a great economy, involved us in three wars, causing the deaths of American citizens, and won't command his officials to execute the law and secure our southern border which is the largest human trafficking operation since the Atlantic slave trade, if not larger. 6 million and counting. Totally deranged for disliking a person like that 😅🤦
@@A_Stereotypical_Heretic triggered
@@disregardthat maybe even super triggered! Who knows!?
This whole thing is like a smaller scale version of Theranos. It started out with big ideas, vision and genuine belief in the idea. At some point it became clear that everything was going to go to shit, but instead of admitting that, reorienting and clearly communicating so solutions could be found, they just kept down the same path and took to lying about what was really going on to maintain the facade. And like Elizabeth Holmes they seem to show no remorse for what they have done, instead just pretending it never happened. Whether it is sociopathy or just enormous ego I guess we'll never know.
I don't understand how anyone could believe some random ass studio was somehow cooking a game that looked as good or better than a AAA game like The Division 2? The way they kept delaying the game and refusing to show any footage was a clear sign they waited until the last few months to actually start making the game because the trailer got far too much traction.
I guess people who only play fortnite will get tricked by this
The thing that I can't get over with this controversy was what the hype was around. Even if this game performed *exactly* as advertised, THE DAY BEFORE was a totally derivative, unoriginal-looking zombie apocalypse survival shooter with the same drab greyish-brownish aesthetic as hundreds of other games.
I think consumers need to reflect on how low their standards for artistic originality have sunk to have hyped themselves up over something that never looked all that worthwhile in the first place.
This. Is. Awesome. Thank you! A friendly amendment to your great analogy (1:05:07): The Day Before was like paying for a 65" TV, but finding in the box a case of sardines with 3 cans missing-and 27 months after the expiration date.
This is top notch content. Kira brings it once again with his slight northern accent curling round every word, delivering each punch with brutal efficiency. Fear him.
Embarrassingly cringe
We as gamers should just not hype games up until a playable version is in our hands. We've all been mislead, burned and made a fool of far too many times with the cycle repeating.
Ive seen no one mention this, but the gun customising part was “inspired” by Metro 2033 Exodus
I'm gonna take this opportunity to recommend the Metro 2033 books. They are absolutely phenomenal and add alot more context and weight to the games. Artyom is one of my favorite protagonists and it's really cool seeing the world through his naive eyes
@@bigdaddydons6241 count me interested. I’ll read them soon!
@@bigdaddydons6241cannot recommend 2034 and 2035. 2034 is just a flow of underdeveloped thoughts of the writer with some signs of writers unhealthy moves in mind. And 2035 is full bucket of shit personally from author. Like I don't understand why the writer focused so much on describing disgusting views or senses, why he needed to fill the book with anti-communist (projecting to anti-russian) schizophrenia and etc. Like he lost himself what the book was about or he was just on drugs while writing. 2033 is the only one he wrote somewhat solid and then broke really bad
@@markfourth948 gonna have to admit ignorance on this one chief, i really should of said the one book because that's really all I've read
Cyperpunk is a good game nowadays. They just had way too many bugs at the start, but those have been mostly removed and Cyberpunk is playable now.
1:04:44 im still stuck with the broken game cuz i had almost 300 hours played and they didnt "auto refund" me
You spent 300 hours in the day before. I am so sorry for your lost time
I absolutely love your long form documentaries - so well researched and scripted. Perfection my good friend, keep up the good work.
I swear, these two seem to think we're all Dory from Finding Nemo, that they can promise or say whatever they feel like, and delete videos and disable comments, and that our memory is so short-term that we'll just completely forget whatever mistakes were made and keep blindly following like lambs to the slaughter.
well. it worked on on a hundread of thousand of people. so they were right. they just focused on the most dumb most naive people. those who automaticly think that when someone says 'disinformation' that they are in the right. and anyone that says 'propaganda' must be pure of heart and have no propaganda to push themselves
Most gamers are exactly that.
Now the next question is... when is the final post mortem for Chronicles of Elyria going to be? How long can Jeromy keep up the illusion of a game?
Lord Caspian, you pleb. Srsly, he gonna be writing blogs about reading books and fog of war til his final days
Say what you want about The Day Before, but... they released SOMETHING, which still puts it ahead of Chronicles of Elyria.
3:30 the chatter is supposed to be game character voices, not player chat, right? Because it definitely does not sound even remotely like real chat.
This is great storytelling, I'm not even a "gamer" or even heard of this controversy but I'm invested!
Maybe the real Day Before was the friends we made along the way
Those scripted trailer videos with actors mimicking what they believe real players would talk like are the bane of my existence. The word cringe might be overused but those make my teeth grind with how embarrassing and condescending they are.
This video lasted longer then that game ever did.
I'd just like to point out that there was another game that Valve stripped the 2h playtime refund window from (iirc battlefield 1), so The Day Before copied yet another studio's homework lmao
Terrific video as always. Next episode idea: the infamous Digital Homicide on how 2 brothers attempted to sue a RUclipsr and 100 Steam users for criticizing their games.
Some indie devs have taken the project files & are remaking the game. It's called TBD: Reborn, there are videos of progress on youtube.
Someone also made a similar thing to showcase how relatively easy at least a surface-level game like TDB can be done, see channel Crimson, The Day After, parody, trailer. According to him he, a single person, made that in "just" around 300 hours from store-assets valuing around 15k bucks I think it was - and it actually looks better, seems to have dynamic snow and even melee and stuff (which TDB was entirely missing). He also uploaded a making of recently it seems, in case you're curious about a deep-dive into the UE engine I guess.
Well done, It's great to see a creator upping their production over time. These long form videos are great!
Gaming journalism at its finest. It's such a shame that folks do these kinds of things, harming themselves, staff, employees, publishers, outlets, funding/investors and the gaming community as a whole. Very much appreciate your work here, Kira. Keep at it, my friend!
This game is not on steam anymore. I found a developer called GI (no publisher yet) on steam with 3 TBA release games- one called The Day After- using the same font and similar style as this and 2 other apocalypse themed games- I kind of wonder if it's these 2 brothers.
I disagree about cyberpunk...they wanted to delay the game more but fans and the donors just wouldnt let them. I have every belief they could have made the gane they claimed were they givem more time...i believe it
I’m in no way, shape or form a GAMER, but you tell a really fascinating story of this epic journey of a scam.
Damn, this was a good ride!
"Asset flip" games are not bad in principle. They have always existed, and many beloved games are filled with assets that are used in countless other projects. The issue is when scammers use the current day high quality assets and enginework that is publicly available, and pretend that they have an actual game. Literally every industry has these same scammers, fake promises on a glamourous product have existed since civilization started forming.
Yeah, i believe it was Force Gaming that made a good video on this subject. Assets are there for a reason, they exist to help developers save time, maybe dont have the skills to create such things, and stuff of the sort. And when done correctly (Palworld as a recent example) most people will not care about the assets being bought/used. But when u just simply slam 500 assets together, and you claim to have spent all this time making this huge game, you end up looking stupid.
It’s like Gaming Plagiarism lol. No one would fault an author for citing a quote in an essay, and no one should fault a developer for an honest use of pre-made assets. It’s the “passing another’s work off as your own” that folks got a distaste for.
The term “asset flip” is typically misused, but it’s supposed to mean a game made wholecloth with prebuilt assets and stitched together with one, maybe two pages worth of code to just barely hold it together. The usage of assets itself isn’t an inherent problem, the problem is using them in such a capacity where it’s the game development equivalent of flipping a house.
"Asset flip" games absolutely are bad in principle. Asset flips are, by their very nature, just people lazily slapping a bunch of good looking assets together to trick people in to buying a steaming turd. That's why they're called asset flips
Asset flips are bad in principle because as the name implies, it's people using assets pre made as the entire basis of their games to make a quick buck. *But* using pre-made assets is not bad in itself, pre-made assets are there to be used in support of your own project.
Let's goooooo.
Down for this 1hr video while I do some chores today.
Ty for the upload!
It sucks that a lot of the people defending Fntastic were doing it for laudable reasons, at least early in the drama. In addition, the situation spoiled the opinions of so many potential indie project supporters that it poisoned the well for other, legitimate small studios trying to stake a place in the market. Low lives like these always tread on goodwill and aspirations, thankfully most of them are usually as incompetent as they are unscrupulous.
I remember I was called everything under the sun for calling this a piece of shit scam game 1-2 years ago, so I hope those people couldn't get their refund and that they feel proper sadness now, because you could tell this was a fucking scam back then, you didn't need it to be released to see that it was a scam.
Who are you and why do we care?
He is the guy who did your mom raw last night@@everythingpony
@@everythingpony could ask you the same thing but frankly I don't talk to losers.
You talk to yourself tho?@@kevinpedersen5290
@@everythingponyI know who he is and care. Maybe you're just not hip and in with it
I was part of the optimistic skepticism camp. I never take things at face value and wait for games to release before even thinking of buying.
The thing that put me in the "This is probably a scam" camp is the bait and switch for prop night.
So this is a somewhat odd request but is it possible you could look into the new vampire the masquerade game that's coming out cause i personally find the way its going is suspicious at least from whats been released
-Fntastic: "I got the whole game world suckling at my teats, and it feels _so good..."_
I find it funny how they also pretended that Mytona was a separate entity, when it IS actually also Fntastic. Apparently they're planning to make more games....lol
Its also alleged that there *may* have been money from governmental bodies as well. So it may not just be the people they planned to scam along the way
This is the best gaming documentary style video I’ve ever watched….hats off Kira this is amazing, I can’t imagine how many hours this took to make lol
Hey Kira, just wanted to say the amount of effort you put into these videos is crazy. It's well researched and structured and the presentation is phenomenal. Keep it up!
been following for a few years and the quality of your videos only increases with each upload, thank you for the content kira
Cyberpunk 2077 is by far one of the best games I've played now though, the improvements vs day one is a night and day difference. 2077 is 100% worth the money it costs and I've done 3 play throughs so far without any real problems at all.
watching this is actually reminding me a TON of the palworld drama where that game blatantly stole from larger studios but made tiny changes or used their own assets to try and deflect accusations of theft despite also having a history of other games with even more blatant theft, but because they're an indie studio (and becausew people have hate boners for the company palworld was being accused of stealing from) and because people thought it looked fun and were willing to overlook the theft for fun, they were wildly defended by people using the same talking points as defenders in this video used... i wasnt familiar with the entire history of this game, but this was a great watch because it really elaborated on the points of stress that i did know about and introduced even more that further explained peoples frustrations with it before and after release. awesome stuff :D
Not once did you ask for a like or subscription in an hour and a half long video. Absolutely goated channel, amazing work. :)
Leave a like and subscribe just to spite him...