After recently re-confirming its March 1st release date and being featured on the Nvidia CES showcase, post-apocalyptic zombie MMORPG The Day Before has been delisted from Steam after a trademark claim. Mytona and developer FNTASTIC have decided to fight the claim, but have delayed the game to November 10, 2023 as a result.
According to a statement released today via Twitter, they claim that Steam removed the game at the request of an individual who trademarked “The Day Before”. They say that the trademark application came after the game was announced back in early 2021, but before the dev team and publisher were able to trademark it themselves.
— Fntastic (@FntasticHQ) January 25, 2023
“Previously, we were not aware of the existence of claims. We found out about this only on January 19th, 2023, when we received a complaint from him and a request to contact him. now we find out all the circumstances of the incident and we will definitely solve everything. We previously planned to post a lengthy gameplay video later this month, but we'll have to sort this issue out first,” reads part of the announcement.
As a result, they've postponed launch to November 10th, 2023 and say that they are working on sorting out this claim issue. While the Nvidia showcase did show off some more of the game in its compilation trailer, the March date wasn’t without some doubt.
The Day Before is not without controversy, especially with last year’s call for “volunteers” and the confusion explanation that followed when asked about what they meant by this and if they were trying to complete the game without compensating everyone.
They might consider a name change, or continue fighting to settle the claim issue We'll see how this ultimately plays out, but for now, if you had any hope at all that The Day Before might be a reality in several weeks’ time, that won't be happening.
