How The Day Before Ran Gaming's Most Evil Scam

Core Thesis

The video argues that The Day Before was the end-product of a long-running pattern by the Russian studio Fantastic—run by brothers Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev—of using hype, misleading trailers, and opaque operations to extract money while shipping broken or unrelated products.

How the Scam Was “Rehearsed” Through Earlier Projects

The founders’ background

The video traces their start in Yakutia’s student incubator system. Eduard Gotovtsev built early projects mainly by selling ideas and using revenue to fund other efforts, then later formed Fantastic (initially in a Yakutia incubator environment).

Rehearsals with prior games

• The Wild Eight (a real hit) was used as a proof-of-concept. The video claims Fantastic quietly sold rights and stopped supporting it early, with patches coming from the publisher side.
• Dead Dozen launched late and broke quickly. The studio later announced an abandonment in a bizarre tone (“human possibilities…without food are limited”) and left it unsupported for years.
• Radiant One performed well but was later undermined by monetization changes, with promised future content never arriving.
• Other mobile/AR products launched briefly and vanished, reinforcing a consistent pattern: promises made, products fade, little accountability.

The Lead-Up to The Day Before: Wishlists, Partnerships, and Fake Footage

The “trailer moment”

In 2021, IGN premiered a highly polished trailer showing an open-world zombie survival MMO with “next-gen” ambition. The video claims the response was massive—hundreds of thousands of wishlists and rapidly growing hype.

External validation used for credibility

• Nvidia featured it with a ray tracing trailer. The video claims this relied on prop builds and staged trailer footage, not representative gameplay.
• The video also claims the founders had doubts internally, and that trailers were assembled from separate build layers that never matched the shipped product.

Propnight as a “Real” Distraction

Evidence of controlled staffing and shifting priorities

While The Day Before was the headline, Fantastic also pushed Propnight (a real and initially well-supported game) and rapidly fixed player concerns.

Later, Propnight was reworked into something closer to Dead by Daylight, then became unsupported after a period of silence—framed as evidence that Fantastic was pulling talent away toward The Day Before.

The Labor System: Volunteers, Unpaid Work, and Debt-Based Retention

The video presents the human side of the con as part of how they allegedly got away with it:

• Fantastic marketed a “volunteer” culture where most contributors were unpaid (with perks/certificates/rewards).
• It claims workers faced brutal hours, low pay for some salaried staff, fines, and a contract system where equipment cost was repaid out of salary—making quitting equivalent to leaving with debt.
• Volunteers were allegedly kept away from The Day Before to reduce leak risk, even if they were present elsewhere in the company.

The “Reasons” for Delay and the Collapse into Emptiness

Delays

The game’s launch date was repeatedly pushed (ultimately landing December 7, 2023). The video contrasts competing explanations:

• A claim of trademark/right issues removing the Steam page.
• Another claim the delay was already planned with Mytona.
• Insider accounts suggesting the trademark story may have been used as justification.

What launched

When The Day Before released, the video claims it was not:

• a dense open world,
• a true MMO,
• or the survival experience shown in trailers.

Instead, it shipped as a small extraction/lobby-style setup with empty spaces, low zombie counts, and major technical and gameplay failures.

Technical and gameplay failures cited

• Players falling through the map, zombies pathing incorrectly, buildings that were inaccessible, money/loot systems not functioning as expected.
• Missing/limited core combat features (e.g., no melee), tutorial dead-ends, and crashes consistent with it being a template (“UE Survival Game”).

Steam/Twitch reaction

The video claims visibility spiked at launch, then rapidly collapsed into overwhelmingly negative reviews, with player count reportedly dropping sharply within days.

The Business Outcome: Official “Bankruptcy,” Disputed Finances, and Investor Choices

• The video claims Fantastic closed after launch due to financial failure, citing internal “sales report” screenshots and Steam-unit figures.
• It argues the paperwork told a different story than the public narrative, including:
  • Singapore corporate filings,
  • cash on hand,
  • questionable address arrangements,
  • and that partners/investors (not Fantastic alone) likely had more direct control over whether to proceed.
• It also describes the investor Mytona allegedly sending specialists internally, then deciding to launch anyway—resulting in the final disaster.

Why the Con Persisted: “No Consequence” Culture and Legal Retaliation

• After backlash and shutdown, the studio reopened with “Fantastic 2.0” and continued Kickstarter-based funding plans for new projects (including more volunteer-style economics).
• The video also claims Fantastic attempted to sue local outlets that called the project a “scam,” arguing against defamation; it states the court dismissed the case.

Conclusion of the Documentary’s Thesis

The documentary’s central claim is that The Day Before was not a failed game—it was a manufactured illusion, building on:

• long-term rehearsal of “sell promises, vanish support,”
• staged trailer footage and separate builds,
• labor abuses enabling the workload,
• investor funding and controlled timing,
• and a studio culture built to avoid accountability.

Presenters / Contributors

• Narrator / channel author (spoken throughout; not explicitly named in the subtitles)
• Eduard Gotovtsev
• Aisen (Eisen) Gotovtsev
• Dr. Disrespect
• IGN (used as a distribution/feature point; not a specific person)
• Nvidia (referenced as a partner/feature; not a specific person)
• Holth (Day Before Discord volunteer/moderation lead mentioned)
• Dennis Adamov (editor-in-chief of yakutia.info mentioned in lawsuit)
• SakhaDay (local site mentioned in lawsuit)
• Mytona (publisher referenced; no individual named)
• Funcom (investor referenced; no individual named)
• German journalist (referenced as reconstructing My.com vote; no name given)