Delayed game drama gets even weirder

The developers of The Day Before have once again given a different explanation for the game’s delay, confusing fans even further.

The developers behind the highly anticipated but lately quite confusing game The Day Before have seemingly changed the story behind the game’s eight month delay again.

Fans were left bewildered over the strange video game delay earlier this week, after the game was suddenly removed from Steam, despite being one of the most wishlisted games on the platform.

Developer Fntastic initially said that the game’s listing was removed due to a bug with the Steam storefront, saying that the game would be restored shortly. After a few hours had passed, the game failed to materialise, and Fntastic changed its tune.

In a statement made on Twitter, the company said that the game had been removed due to a trademark dispute, after an unnamed “private individual” reportedly trademarked the name following the game’s announcement.

At the time, Fntastic said that the trademark dispute would take a long time to sort out, which was the reason for both the eight month delay to the game, and the indefinite delay of a “lengthy gameplay video” the company planned to release.

In a statement to IGN, Fntastic has now contradicted its earlier statement, saying that the game’s delay had actually been planned before the trademark issue came up. The ten-minute gameplay video was to accompany the announcement of the delay, according to the studio’s co-founders Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev.

The Day Before developers Fntastic have shown very little gameplay for the game. Picture: Fntastic

“We planned to move the game’s release before and plan to announce it with [publisher] Mytona in a 10-minute gameplay video,” Fntastic said, “And then you all know what happened. So to be on the safe side, to ensure there are no more transfers, we, along with the publisher, chose November 10. That is a safe date, given the trademark dispute.”

The studio went on to say that it had strong legal representation, and that it was confident that the trademark dispute will be resolved. It also said that it would be using the extra time to make the game “more polished, optimized, and content-filled”.

On the claims from some fans that the game doesn’t exist – a sentiment shared by Fntastic’s own Discord moderator – Fntastic said that “when the game comes out, people will finally see the truth”, adding that “the storm will calm down eventually”.

It’s not unusual for games to get delayed, though usually the circumstances around the delay are much less confusing. A strange trailer for Black Myth: Wukong revealed a huge delay for that game too, pushing the game from its previous release window of 2023 into 2024.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.