‘The Day Before’ developer defends use of unpaid “volunteers”

Fntastic, the developer behind The Day Before, has defender its use of unpaid “volunteers”.

Earlier this week, an update to Fntastic’s website revealed that “Fntastic’s culture is based on the idea of volunteering. This means that every Fntastic member is a volunteer.”

The website went on to explain that while “full-time volunteers” are essentially paid workers, “part-time volunteers” are unpaid developers that are instead given “cool rewards, participation certificates, and free codes” for their work.

People obviously found this strange, especially because The Day Before is Steam’s most wishlisted title but defending their staffing, Fntastic spoke to Eurogamer and said that “essentially, the word ‘volunteer’ comes from the Latin word ‘voluntarius’, meaning ‘willing’ or ‘of one’s own choice’.”

“Anyone who is open to life can become a volunteer with Fntastic, and there are two types of volunteers,” they continued. “Today we have over 100 full-time internal volunteers (employees) from Singapore, Russia, the Netherlands, Thailand, Ukraine, Finland, Kazakhstan, and Belarus who work as engineers, artists, HR professionals, etc. We also have 40 external US and worldwide volunteers (supporters) who help with testing and reviewing our products at a very early stage.”

“In addition to tests, external volunteers (supporters) help localise products into different languages,” continued Fntastic before saying some volunteers get hired as full-time employees.

They haven’t denied the fact that those volunteers or supporters are essentially unpaid workers though.

The Day Before was originally set to launch in June 2022, but in a statement shared in May, Fntastic announced that fans will need to wait until March 1, 2023, to play the game.

“Feeling and understanding the great responsibility that we face, with enormous gratitude in our hearts, we’re pleased to announce that The Day Before is switching to the new Unreal Engine 5 technology,” reads the statement.

In other news, Escape From Tarkov is set to expand the Lighthouse map, rework certain skills and add new weapons with the upcoming 0.12.12.30 patch, which will follow a wipe.