The developer of the upcoming survival title The Day Before is relying on unpaid workers to finish the game.
The day before it came out of nowhere and went viral due to a brief game show. The footage shown so far looks like a mix of Ubisoft’s The Division and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, a zombie survival game where other players are as dangerous as the meat-eating hordes. It’s the most coveted game on Steam, with over 100,000 adding it to its mandatory stack.
Open world. Survival. Triple-A production values. The Day Before is an ambitious project for a developer that most people have not heard of. All the “gameplay” videos posted so far have been heavily written.
It’s the video game equivalent of one of those viral videos in which someone throws a basketball backwards from the other side of the court and lands through the hoop. You know it’s staged. You know it’s smoke and mirrors and there have probably been 1000 attempts to get the images. But people still share it as if it were real.
It comes from Fntastic, an untested developer that has made games like the Dead by Daylight Propnight clone.
According to the developer’s own website, the game is created by an army of unpaid volunteers.
“Fntastic’s culture is based on the idea of volunteering,” the website says, proudly. “That means all Fntastic members are volunteers.”
But some animals are more alike than others.
“There are two types of volunteers at Fntastic: full-time and part-time,” the site says. “Full-time volunteers work for salaries and their number is limited. “
If you click on the link to apply for a paid job, there are currently no charges available. However, you can sign up to volunteer part-time to get “interesting rewards, certificates of participation, and free codes.”
These unpaid workers do everything from translation to community moderation. You can also offer your “unique skills to enhance our projects or create new special features.”
In a video on the website, the company offers a sales pitch on why you should work for free.
“Whatever you do in life, you do it voluntarily or unintentionally,” the video states. “If you do it willingly, it becomes a heaven. If you do it unintentionally, it becomes hell. Fantastic culture is based on the idea of volunteering. Being a volunteer means participating willingly working for a common cause. ”.
The other person in the video – who has so far smiled on camera – speaks: “The idea of volunteering comes from our own experiences and aspirations. Or, in other words, becoming a person who says “yes” to life. Volunteering means that in every action you take, you bring a certain pleasure ”.
The Day Before will be released in 2023. It was recently delayed so the game could be migrated to Unreal Engine 5.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.