#fntastic

Fntastic is a game developer company created and based in Yakutsk. A couple of years ago they were backed by Mytona, a mobile game dev company that was also established here.

In 2022, Mytona almost completely left Yakutsk, along with InDrive, they did it in order to keep being able to work internationally and not depend on Russian politics. That made Fntastic the biggest and best known software developer in Yakutsk. I even considered joining them after being let go from Mytona, but I knew better. Mytona laid off hundreds of people in the past 18 months, I'm sure some of them got to Fntastic.

One of my cousins worked at Fntastic about three years ago. He was making video game levels. He worked for 12 hours a day without being compensated for his extra hours, he said his bosses (the Gotovtsev brothers) would randomly ask him to redo everything just based on the vibes. He was paid enough money by local standards, but nowhere near what a triple A dev should get (about $800/mo).

He burnt out and left. It was his first job in game dev.

As far as I understood, they barely had managers because the Gotovtsevs were controlling everything. I know that just maintaining a mobile game needs a ton of management, discussions, feedback, approvals etc. They had none of that.

The Day Before is built from newly purchased assets and has very little gameplay. It seems like the production process never changed, they kept remaking the game from scratch, only knowing that it should be whatever the latest definition of "cool" is.

Mytona is their publisher and they've already lost a lot of money, first by developing too many new projects at the same time and then none of them making it, then by having to move the entire business abroad, and now by backing Fntastic.

I think I'd call the Gotovtsevs scammers. They lied to everyone, including themselves.

The video below explains how suspicious it was from the very start.