DayZ, Rust Teams Troll The Day Before Studio’s Closure Announcement

In case you have not heard, FNTASTIC, the developer behind The Day Before, announced its closure less than a week after launching its zombie game in Early Access.

To accompany the announcement, FNTASTIC posted a statement on X/Twitter that was oddly structured, which included in the end of an abridged timeline of FNTASTIC’s history from stem to stern.

Not long after this statement was released, the developers behind DayZ and Rust decided to troll FNTASTIC. DayZ developer Bohemia Interactive was the first to troll FNTASTIC with a statement of them celebrating DayZ’s 10th anniversary of its release in Early Access (even though it’s not for another five days). Bohemia Interactive also took a few other jabs at FNTASTIC, including how the Early Access version of DayZ launched with melee.

/s🤭 pic.twitter.com/xwfNIGpY0W

— DayZ 🖥 🎮 ❤️ (@DayZ) December 11, 2023

Meanwhile, the developers behind Rust also decided to play along. But instead of making their own statement parodying the same structure as FNTASTIC’s, they simply used a “red marker” approach to replace certain words when applicable, as you can see from its post below.

/s🤭 🫶 pic.twitter.com/xbVCzd81ES

— Rust (@playrust) December 11, 2023

For those unaware, both DayZ and Rust are two open-world survival games. The former is an open-world game set in a zombie apocalypse, while the latter is an open-world survival game where you have to focus on surviving in the wilderness. Both games started as mods based on Arma 2 before becoming games that would be released in Early Access and eventually see full releases years later.

There is a certain level of irony that these two accounts are trolling FNTASTIC. Both games in theory should have been competitors to The Day Before, but as many players discovered last week when it launched in Early Access, FNTASTIC’s zombie game was anything but an open-world, but rather an extraction shooter.

The Day Before was once the most wishlisted game on Steam and just four days after its launch on Early Access, its player count dropped to almost 90 percent and it is now one of the worst reviewed games on Valve’s digital store.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.