New project from The Day Before makers a scam? Dataminer provides clues

With “Escape Factory,” Fntastic, the studio behind the flopped “The Day Before,” announced a new project last week. A Kickstarter campaign included. However, according to a dataminer, potential backers of the project should be careful.

With what was originally planned as a survival MMO “The day before” The development studio Fntastic had one of the spectacular failures of 2023.

After “The Day Before” turned into an expected flop, Fntastic presented the project immediately and gave the closure of the studio Known. Somewhat surprisingly, Fntastic returned last week with a new project back onto the screen: “Escape Factory”. A cooperative escape title for up to eight players, the development of which Fntastic would initially like to finance via Kickstarter.

After skeptical players have already spoken of a possible scam or a repetition of the “The Day Before” scenario, a data miner claims to have discovered various indications that “Escape Factory” does not in principle exist as an independent game.

What could be a possible scam?

How Insider Gaming Citing the data miner “Occular Malice”, various functions of “Escape Factory” are said to come from a free demo package from Unity. These include the network features, the lobby and the matchmaking mechanics.

The demo package in question is usually used by beginners to get familiar with development for Unity. However, according to the data miner, this indication of possible fraud did not stop there.

“Occular Malice” also states that the game code from “Escape Factory” also raises eyebrows. The majority of the code here should consist of assets, which in many cases can be downloaded free of charge from the Unity Store and used by developers.

According to the dataminer, all of this could indicate that Fntastic is simply looking to get money on Kickstarter with a quickly cobbled together “game.”

Fntastic deletes critical comments

To make matters worse, Fntastic is currently doing little to convince players of its intention to deliver a real game with “Escape Factory”. Instead, the studio deletes posts that are critical of the title in the official Steam forum without comment.

Fntastic takes a similar approach on social media. Here the developers ignore critical voices and block their authors for a short time. It is also understandable that the community is more than skeptical about Fntastic’s announcement that it is serious this time.

A look at this also makes it clearer the Kickstarter campaign for “Escape Factory”. Of the targeted financing goal of almost 14,000 euros, just 2,000 euros have been raised in the last few days.

Further reports on Escape Factory, Fntastic, The Day Before.

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