The survival MMO “The Day Before” has issues with the name. The studio tries to present it as if a villain wants to sabotage them and make money at their expense by unjustly claiming the name for themselves. But the situation looks very different from the perspective of the supposed villain.
This is the situation:
- The survival MMO “The Day Before” generated a lot of hype on Steam a few months ago with a game that can be summarized as “The Division, but with zombies”.
- But difficulties are arising: The release has now been postponed multiple times – also new videos no longer seem as strong as the first trailers. Furthermore, “The Day Before” has disappeared from Steam.
- The team has identified a man as the “culprit” for the difficulties, who wants to contest the trademark rights to the name “The Day Before”.
Studio lashes out against “so-called owner” of the rights
Here’s how the studio has portrayed the “culprit”:
In a tweet from February 12, the studio behind the game, Fntastic, sounds angry and passive-aggressive. The studio presents itself as a defender of the truth – they have been wronged:
- The studio complains that first they were banned from Steam, and then YouTube deleted some videos.
- It speaks of a “so-called owner of the rights” – that is the creator of a calendar app, which has nothing to do with the “Games” category.
- When Fntastic announced the game in 2021, the man “wanted to take over the title” and registered the trademark rights before the team of “The Day Before”.
- He has now made a “dubious” offer to talk to the developers.
From the team’s perspective, it seems that an individual wants to unlawfully profit from the game “The Day Before”.
Company behind calendar app: “We protect our rights
What does this person say? The site Eurogamer talked to the developer of the Korean calendar app. The company says:
- The app has been available since 2010 under the name “The Day Before” and it operates worldwide. “The Day Before” has been downloaded over 40 million times.
- The name has been registered in South Korea since 2015 – when they learned that a game with the same name was coming out, they decided to “take measures to protect the name rights”.
- They now hold the name in South Korea, the USA, China, Russia, Japan, Vietnam, and the EU.
The developers of the app say:
We want to resolve the copyright dispute as quickly as possible and continue to protect the app, so that customers can use it without worrying.
It certainly looks like the “villain” that the studio has identified has very legitimate reasons to protect their ownership.
The “so-called owner” of the rights is perhaps simply the rightful owner of the rights. It’s hard to call it a “dubious offer” in this context.
What is the problem? The problem seems to be that copyright makes no differentiation between digital applications: a survival MMO on Steam and a calendar app both fall into the same category, IC 9.
So there is no “villain” trying to ruin the other. Rather, the app developer is simply protecting their rights to a product they have operated for 13 years.
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