After the fraud flop The Day Before, the developers at Fntastic are back with a new project, but that too apparently turns out to be a scam again. Data miners examined the crowdfunding project more thoroughly – and found what they were looking for.
Screenshot aus The Day Before
For a long time, the survival game The Day Before was one of the most wanted games on Steam, but shortly after its release the title turned out to be a huge flop and had so little to offer that it was considered a scam. A few days later the chapter was closed again and the game disappeared from the internet.
The developers at Fntastic, who at the time simply spoke of “shit happens,” suddenly returned to the scene this week. With the rebranding Fntastic 2.0 they want to take on the new game Escape Factory and do things better this time. The studio’s “honest new game” is much smaller and is intended to be financed with the players’ money via crowdfunding – but shortly after the start of the Kickstarter campaign, which has now raised over 10,000 dollars and not at all is far from the financing target of almost 14,000 dollars, there is again a lot of reason for doubt.
Data miners took a closer look at Escape Factory and – perhaps not entirely surprisingly for many – found what they were looking for. Above all, the data miner Occular Malice has made an appearance and is now essentially fighting a battle with Fntastic 2.0, because the studio is apparently rigorously deleting his and other postings with the concerns expressed on Steam.
The concerns of Occular Malice and others are obviously well-founded. Accordingly, the new game Escape Factory should simply copy other assets, as was the case with The Day Before. In this respect, there can be no question of Fntastic’s own achievement.
Specifically, Escape Factory’s networking, lobbying, and matchmaking mechanics are all intended to be examples of the Unity demo code commonly used by those wanting to learn how to use the Unity engine to develop games. At the moment, the corresponding code passages for the free-to-play title have apparently only been adopted.
And the majority of the previous lines of code for the title should largely consist of assets simply taken from the Unity Store; many of these are provided free of charge by the engine provider. Fntastic seems to be working less on its own with the new project and more copying it.
The studio is also attracting attention due to censorship, as posts in the Steam forums on this topic are apparently simply deleted. All data miners and players who have spoken negatively or critically about the new game and the rebranding of the controversial studio are also actively blocked on social media. So the whole discussion about Fntastic is entering the next round!