Months ago, “The Day Before” was one of the most highly anticipated new games on Steam, but the shine is quickly wearing off. After delays in the release and a disappointing trailer, there are once again difficulties with the “The Division, but with Zombies” game. The Day Before has disappeared from Steam, and YouTube videos are now being taken down. The team hints on Twitter that dark powers are blackmailing them. However, they aren’t receiving much understanding in return.
What is the situation with The Day Before?
- The game seemed to fulfill a dream with its first trailer in 2021: “A top survival MMO that comes out of nowhere” – a sort of “The Division, but with Zombies”.
- The game became one of the most anticipated games on Steam thanks to the strong trailer.
- But in recent weeks, strange stories about the game have been piling up, causing many previously enthusiastic players to doubt whether everything is above board. The team doesn’t even possess the rights to the name “The Day Before”, but they promised to resolve the issue.
The game has now disappeared from Steam, and a new video on YouTube has also vanished from the platform. Attempts to clarify these events on Twitter have failed.
The team explains why Steam and YouTube are removing content
This is the latest development: In a tweet from February 12, the team states that content from “The Day Before” has now disappeared from Steam and YouTube.
As an explanation, the team released “3 facts”:
- The rights holder to “The Day Before” is a calendar app that has nothing to do with the game.
- After presenting the game in 2021, this person wanted to take over the title and registered rights to the title before the team of “The Day Before”.
- Now it is said that the trademark owner offered to contact the team to “discuss something” – here it seems implied that the “owner” has essentially taken the title hostage and will release it if paid.
The statement ends with “We will fight. In the truth lies strength.”
Popular calendar app reminds users “one day before” about important dates
Who holds the rights? As PC Gamer reports, it apparently stems from a calendar app from South Korea, “TheDayBefore (D-Day Countdown)” by TheDayBefore Inc., which is interfering with the creators of “The Day Before”.
It is an app with over 10 million downloads that is supposed to remind users “the day before” the important date that it is approaching.
The app has over 96,000 reviews in the Google Store and boasts a strong rating of 4.6 (via playgoogle).
The most popular review of the app is already from November 2020 – thus, before the presentation of the same-named game “The Day Before”.
“You guys have no idea what you’re doing.”
Why is the team embarrassing themselves with this? It seems amateurish. They have gone public with a title without securing the rights to the name. “The Day Before” (the day before) is such a general expression that someone else could very well have come up with it as a title for something.
Now the developers claim that someone has exploited the team’s oversight in not registering the title, and instead of clarifying their own oversight, they are further elevating it with their Twitter post.
The team is trying to portray themselves with statements as the “underdog no one believes in”, yet it seems they simply messed up the name and are now avoiding responsibility for the mistake, looking for someone to blame who is protecting their rights to the name.
In the comments on Twitter, it states:
- “You guys just have no idea what you’re doing.”
- “I can’t sympathize with a company that can’t manage to protect its game before it explodes on Steam.”
- “Yes, if you don’t protect the name and someone else does, your stuff will be taken down as soon as you publish anything with that name – either you settle the dispute (not easy when you’ve forgotten), or just change the name?”
At PC Gamer, there is a strong recommendation for the developers to finally get a PR team instead of going public with unfiltered tweets.
From potential players on Twitter, the “underdog/victim” role does not seem to be accepted. Here, impatience is evident, especially since the team has already lost a lot of credit with the second delay of the release date to the end of 2023.
The last trailer also wasn’t that great:
Long gameplay video of The Day Before fails with fans – “Best walking simulator I have ever seen.”
