Gabriel Stanford-ReisingerHo, ho, ho, and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and Happy Holidays to those who don’t. It’s been a fantastic year for us full of great reviews, fresh faces, and a healthy dose of audience growth. While I reported on a lot of the downs of the industry, making me feel like that “this is fine” meme, I’ve been mostly looking on the positive side of things, starting my own website next year… don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I’m five years strong and don’t see myself breaking that.
Anyway, let’s get down to it.
The Day Before Decable
I’ve gone the route of reporting a lot on The Day Before elsewhere, especially as it was confirmed to be Early Access, AKA not on PlayStation just yet. Let me tell you, it was an insane couple of days since it launched on December 7.
Full of promise, yet it couldn’t deliver, coaxing out 1s and 2s from outlets reviewing the game and scathing reviews from its community. It was a game that promised the world, and what Fntastic offered was Vatican City, basically. It wasn’t an MMO, it didn’t have this next-level polish, it wasn’t innovative or unique.
I never played it, but I’m glad I didn’t waste my money because days after the game launched, the studio went out of business, its CEO wiped his LinkedIn profile of its existence, its website changed, and former staff (and volunteers, cause it used volunteers) are now coming out of the woodworks and blasting the dev for its bad communication between departments. Oh, and servers are shutting down next month, rendering both Fntastic’s The Day Before, an overly-zealous or some may say “scam game,” and its actually “okay” counterpart, Propnight, unplayable.
I started getting wary of The Day Before as I dug into the studio once it claimed to be having copyright issues. It just rubbed me the wrong way, like many others, and started this whole revolution of people skeptical of its ethics. In the end, it all just feels so fishy to me, but at least it’s over, even if it meant a lot of people were out a fair chunk of change because even this was Early Access, it still charged $40-ish.
The Insomniac Situation
Personal information, studio info, and a release schedule, all that was stolen from Insomniac Games. No, we didn’t forget this happened and no didn’t fly under our radar, but personally, out of respect for the studio (and that it contained personal information of employees), I didn’t feel it right to cover this attempted blackmail-turned-leak.
I already know people are going to decry about us covering leaks, if this was just a standard leak, we would cover it, but it wasn’t — it was a malicious attack on the studio, pulling 1.67 terabytes of personal info about its employees. We cover leaks, and sometimes these leaks are from malicious people, but a lot of the time, the leaks don’t contain sensitive information about real people.
We’d do the same for any studio, giving its employees a baseline level of respect. Insomniac has since responded, mentioning that “like Logan, Insomniac is resilient.”
PSX Extreme Staff GOTY Coming
Thought I would let you know, next week, we’ll be sharing our picks for Game of the Year — this is a staff-centered post, so it’s all our opinions, and I even made sure to clarify that if their GOTY is on a separate platform, that’s fine. No bias here.
Expect that post on December 31, right around the turn of the year.
