Fntastic, the developer of the controversial game The Day Before, has closed its doors. The game has also been removed from sale.

The Day Before was released on December 7 after several delays, and four days later Fnastic announced that the studio was closing. “Unfortunately, The Day Before has failed financially and we no longer have any money to continue operating. Everything we have earned will be used to pay off our debts to partners.”

The company continues: “We put all our effort, resources and hours into developing The Day Before, which was our first major game. We would have loved to release new patches to reveal the game’s full potential, but unfortunately we cannot don’t pay that.” As far as we know, the game’s servers will remain live for now.

The Day Before was surrounded by controversy before its release. Many gamers feared that it was a scam by developer Fntastic, and the game was postponed several times – partly because there were problems with the rights surrounding the name of the game.

Last Thursday, The Day Before was released on Steam, but soon the player reviews were “overwhelmingly negative”. SteamDB also shows that the number of players dropped quickly after release day.

Players reported many bugs and a lack of features. It turned out that it was not an open-world MMO at all, as the developer indicated in advance, but rather an extraction-like shooter. Furthermore, there were all kinds of bizarre advertisements in the game and almost the entire game world seemed to be built from ready-made Unreal Engine assets.