Steam’s most wishlisted game asks for volunteers to finish development

The Day Before, a zombie survival-based MMO, currently the most wishlisted game on Steam, is recruiting volunteers in order to finish development.

Recently delayed until March 2023, developer Fntastic has changed its website to explain the company’s culture, and ask for volunteers. The most recent delay was apparently caused by the team switching development to the recently released and much improved Unreal Engine 5.

The team added a ‘Volunteer’ page to the company website stating “Fntastic’s culture is based on the idea of volunteering. This means that every Fntastic member is a volunteer.” The team also makes references to the people working there as volunteers multiple times across the site.

The team, which is from Singapore, speaks English non-natively which could be to blame for the confusion. Fntastic claims it is a voluntary culture, splitting volunteers into full-time salaried volunteers, and part-time unpaid volunteers. Salaried employees do not fit the description of volunteers, who are not paid as part of the definition.

However, the part-time volunteers who are remunerated via “cool rewards, participation certificates, and free codes” would fit the definition. Smaller teams sometimes use passionate volunteers for smaller tasks such as community moderation for social media such as Discord or Twitch. However, the tasks which Fntastic is asking volunteers to fulfil fall outside of the usual scope, and would usually be undertaken by paid workers.

In its description Fntastic asks for volunteers who can help with “various activities ranging from translating to community moderating,” going on to say that “Part-time volunteers also can offer their unique skills to improve our projects or create new special features.” Translation and programming features are both difficult and specialized tasks, often classified as highly-skilled work. As such these jobs are usually rewarded financially.

The game recently passed its initial release date of June 21. 2022, supposedly owing to the change in game engine. However, due to the addition of the volunteer page, fans suspect that it has run into issues with development, and are now looking to recruit global volunteers. Fntastic has yet to clarify its position. 

Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.