The Day Before documentary reveals hellish working conditions for developers

An in-depth documentary on The Day Before has exposed the game’s nightmarish development. Abysmal leadership, maltreatment of staff, and more were all laid bare.

The Day Before might just go down in history as one of the worst games of all time after making launch Cyberpunk 2077 look like a Naughty Dog title. The game was so far removed from what was shown off pre-release that players called it an “obvious scam”.

After losing 90% of its players, development studio Fntastic shut down just days after the game’s release. Shortly after the game was delisted from Steam and as players called for refunds, the devs’ response was a simple “s**t happens”.

It was pretty safe to assume that working on The Day Before was a rough time for those involved but apparently, it was worse than our wildest imaginings. A documentary from German publications Game Two and GameStar details one of the ugliest developments we’ve ever heard of.

A complete lack of direction

Speaking to 16 Fntastic employees and one “volunteer” developer, all of whom chose to remain anonymous, Game Two and GameStar exposed The Day Before’s horrifying development. Their sources detailed the whiplash-inducing, dictatorial leadership of Fntastic founders, the Gotovtsev brothers.

According to the anonymous interviewees, the Gotovtsevs would constantly call for changes in the game’s style and tone based on whatever flavor of the month they played during development. Reports of multiple overhauls based on games like Hogwarts Legacy, Baldur’s Gate 3, and even GTA Online impacted The Day Before.

These frequent changes based on the whims of the Gotovtsevs caused major discontent among developers who originally signed on for a relatively small survival game with cartoonish aesthetics. This a far cry from the large areas and realistic visuals we got.

The Day Before’s developers elaborated that there were three vastly different versions of the title throughout its development. One of the team revealed that they weren’t even aware it was supposed to be an MMO before a trailer was published.

Treatment of staff

The lack of a cohesive vision for The Day Before and the pressure from the Gotovtsevs resulted in despicable working conditions for the devs at Fntastic. Sources in the documentary detailed spontaneous firings used to “motivate” team members despite the studio heads referring to the team as “a big family”.

One interviewee revealed that one of only five QA testers was fired on the spot just days before the game’s release after one of the Gotovtsevs encountered a bug. There were reports of forced overtime with one of the developers alleging there were periods the team worked a minimum of 16 hours a day under threat of termination.

“Over the last year and a half, I haven’t had a Saturday off, and for the last two months I haven’t had a day off at all,” they explained. “I found myself begging for a few hours’ break just to find time for a shower or a meal,” revealed another.

Developers of The Day Before were even fined for committing errors while working on the game. An incident where two employees were forced to pay $1,930 for turning in “low-quality” voice recordings was used as an example.

The mysterious disappearance of the Gotovtsevs

The people responsible for the abhorrent mistreatment of the team and the dumpster fire that is The Day Before have become incredibly hard to track down. The Gotovtsev brothers up and vanished around the time of the game’s launch which sources in the documentary allege is because they knew a storm was coming.

They briefly reappeared via Microsoft Teams to announce the shutdown of Fntastic but have been silent since. The rumor floating amongst former staff is that the two have begun from the ground up with a new studio developing mobile games but this is currently unconfirmed.

These details are only a fraction of what was revealed in the full documentary embedded above. It’s certainly worth watching to understand the abysmal working conditions that plagued The Day Before’s development team.

The documentary itself is in German but there are full subtitles for anyone who doesn’t speak the language.