Fntastic Sues Russian Site for Calling ‘The Day Before’ a ‘Scam’

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Summary

  • Fntastic is suing Yakutia.Info for calling their game The Day Before a “scam.”
  • The game faced public backlash for perceived similarities to other popular titles and numerous bugs.
  • Yakutia.Info refuses to retract its statements and will countersue, arguing for freedom of speech.

Fntastic, the developer behind the notorious and short-lived multiplayer survival extraction shooter The Day Before is taking Russian website Yakutia.Info to court for calling the game a “scam.” The 2023 title, with a fluctuating genre and even more tenuous public perception, was first announced in 2021. Fntastic’s then-upcoming project garnered a lot of excitement thanks to its interesting premise and teaser trailers. For a short while, The Day Before became the most wishlisted game on Steam leading up to its original release date, which was ultimately delayed a few times.

Along with the delays came a rather quick shift in reputation as people began to notice striking similarities between The Day Before‘s trailers and those of other games like The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption 2, Tom Clancy’s The Division, Call of Duty, and even Cyberpunk 2077. But that marked just the beginning of the debacle, which would result in The Day Before going down on the negative side of gaming history, with members of the community, including news site Yakutia.Info, labeling the entire project a scam that had “borrowed gameplay mechanics from other games.”

Despite many panning the extraction shooter, developer Fntastic seems to have taken umbrage with one entity in particular calling The Day Before a scam. According to website Yakutia.Info (via 80 Level and machine translation), its base is in Yakutsk, Russia, the home region of Fntastic’s co-founder brothers, Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev. The site revealed that it is being sued by the duo for its words in two articles, which have allegedly harmed Fntastic’s reputation.

Fntastic Takes Umbrage with Website’s Description of The Day Before

For its part, Yakutia.Info changed the word “scam” in one article to “embarrassment,” with the explanation that “scam” is relatively new to the Russian language and has a range of meanings, like “failure” and “fraud.” As for the site’s claim that Fntastic had copied The Day Before‘s gameplay mechanics from other titles, that was a direct quote from a video blog by media outlet IXBT Games, an “authoritative portal” in Russia. Furthermore, Yakutia.Info doubled down on its stance, stating that “the meaning of the articles remained unchanged but became more accurate.”

Despite Yakutia.Info’s attempts to resolve the matter, Fntastic will only settle out of court if the website eliminates the problematic articles and issues an apology. However, the site has chosen to stand its ground against what it perceives as “restriction on free speech.” It refuses to eliminate the articles and intends to countersue Fntastic instead. Yakutia.Info also highlights that other sites made similar statements about the developer, but Fntastic chose to sue a relatively small company. The article from Yakutia.Info ends by suggesting that the Gotovtsev brothers are still operating at an amateur level.

The comments beneath Yakutia.Info’s announcement about the lawsuit largely support the website, with many people speaking out about the controversy surrounding The Day Before, its rocky release, and subsequent abrupt shutdown. Despite a lot of the readers seeming to agree with the assessment that game was a scam, others have pointed out that Fntastic might nevertheless have a case for libel or something similar.

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2025-03-18 16:40