I’ve long made my stance clear on Kickstarter and Early Access titles (I mostly stay away from them). While there are developers who are legitimately trying to obtain funding to continue development of their game, there are also those who see it as a way to scam a demographic that gets too easily hyped for anything that sounds/looks good and end up becoming gullible suckers in the process. It’s these few rug pullers who end up giving crowd funding and legitimate early access titles, a bad rap. But this is also about personal responsibility, where gamers need to stop falling hook/line/sinker for the hype.
I had no clue about this title or company (survival type games do not interest me); I just ended up reading about the whole fiasco after articles noted the closure of the studio (Fntastic) that only last week announced their $40 Steam early access survival MMO title called “The Day Before”. From reading various articles, the company has teased this game well before this early access release, dating back to 2021 (this one from MassivelyOP). They ended up posting a screen shot of their closure on Twitter (I use the Eight Dollar extension on Chrome/Edge because it easily shows if Verified status was paid for or is the original/more stringent version pre-Musk).
So this one isn’t exactly a fly-by-night thing; it’s been hyped up for awhile where anticipation built up to last weeks early access launch. A launch that seems to have not gone well and played a calculus in the decision to close up shop.
Now Steam doesn’t immediately release funds to early access developers (I believe it is 30 days after) so most will likely be able to get a refund (early access refund policy is different from the usual 2 hours of play rule so long as they were purchased directly from Steam, and not a 3rd party site including “CD key” style redemption codes; they can be refunded until the actual release date).
But this type of fiasco, should always serve as a cautionary tale given how there have been worse offenders that have taken advantage of the whole early access/Kickstarter crowd funding system, where you also have willing participants willing to constantly hand money over (look at Star Citizen for example). The gaming industry has to date, managed to steer clear of being under heavy scrutiny by consumer rights organizations (the closest was the whole RNG lootbox thing from a few years ago). I’m personally someone who doesn’t care for over regulation by government bodies, but I believe that it is going to become a necessity given the gaming industries inability to self-regulate themselves (especially as more studios push the whole “games as a live service” angle).
As it stands, online only games are released (some with near reckless abandon), money exchanged for virtual goods, and get shut down within short order. Sure, things are more nebulous when many titles are released as free to play; but the ones who do end up losing their virtual purchases end up watching all of that go poof. It’s why I’ve always said that any money spent on online games, should never be looked at as an investment, that it should be looked at as an entertainment expense and nothing more. But for various reasons, there are many who get trapped in that mentality (that it’s an actual investment) where they end up becoming trapped in the sunk-cost fallacy.
But it all starts with way too many who fall for the hype, the glitzy trailers, and promises of game play and game systems that sound too good to be true. It’s why I never had an actual interest in getting involved on the design/development side because while it’s relatively easy to come up with ideas, the more difficult reality is actually coding that. The tools to prototype are much better (which allows one to create an environment in short order, and thus create tidbits of clips that are suitable for short trailers that can look good). But it is far more challenging to create the actual granular details; the actual game play, combat, and game systems that defines the actual player experience. It takes years for already established studios with huge budgets (and all of people/production resources) to go from concept to alpha test. So it should be caveat emptor when an ambitious sounding/looking title (from a barely staffed outfit) is trying to accomplish that through non-traditional funding (and could not secure venture capital beforehand which means the conceptual sales pitch didn’t pique any VC interest). Or in short, gamers need to stop being gullible suckers.
