It’s not often that an upcoming video game has its very existence put into question, but that has been the case with The Day Before and the question of if the game is actually real.
In the run up to its launch, some excited fans have lost their faith in the project and have gone so far as to suspect that The Day Before isn’t even a real game and some kind of scam. But why exactly do they think that?
And. more importantly, are they actually right?
What is The Day Before?
For context, The Day Before is advertised as a multiplayer open world survival game set in a zombie apocalypse. It’s in development at a studio called Fntastic, which has released other games before that are still available on Steam. It was announced in 2021 and, after a few delays, is scheduled to launch on Steam as an Early Access title on Dec. 7.
Why do people think The Day Before isn’t real?
Following its announcement trailer, which featured gameplay and promised a June 2022 release, word on The Day Before‘s progress became virtually non-existent. It wasn’t until May 2022 that Fntastic revealed (via IGN) that the game would be delayed to March 2023 due to development switching from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5.
Admittedly, plenty of games have launched after long stretches of silence. The biggest contributing factor to the scam accusations, however, came in January 2023 when The Day Before‘s listing on Steam was mysteriously taken down. It was initially claimed that this was due to a bug on the platform, but Fntastic later admitted it was due to a copyright strike. It turned out that the studio never filed a trademark for the name The Day Before; someone else took it and thus requested the game’s Steam page be removed. This prompted Fntastic to delay the game for another eight months until November and postpone a new gameplay trailer it had prepared.
This incident raised a lot of questions. Fntastic’s statement admitted that the trademark was available back when The Day Before was announced, so why didn’t the studio acquire it then, or at all in the following two years? This perceived lack of professionalism, combined with the lack of gameplay, is what sparked theories that the game was in fact a scam made to dupe investors, especially since an eight-month delay seemed awfully long just to resolve a trademark dispute. Fntastic would then contradict its previous statement about the trademark issues causing the delay, telling IGN that it was already planning to delay the game to begin with.
Is there any The Day Before gameplay?
Aside from the initial trailer, Fntastic did manage to release a 10-minute gameplay trailer in early February. However, fans were very underwhelmed with what was shown and felt it wasn’t enough to prove The Day Before‘s legitimacy, with comments on Reddit comparing it to more of a tech demo or proof of concept. You can’t view it for yourself, by the way, since the trailer was taken down from YouTube via a copyright strike and has yet to be put back up on Fntastic’s channel.
On Nov. 1, though, Fntastic announced the trademark issues had been resolved, restoring the game’s Steam page (though not the previous gameplay trailer for some reason) and uploaded a new gameplay trailer; one which shared a new release date of Dec. 7. A pinned comment from the studio reads, “These past five years have been filled with sweat and blood. We’ve been through so much. But we want to thank you for standing by us. All of this is for you.”
The 27,000 likes versus 19,000 dislikes shows that plenty of people are still feeling positive about the game or have had their faith restored thanks to the new trailer. There remains a lot of distrust, though, and some may not be fully convinced until The Day Before is out and playable.
Is The Day Before a real video game?
So far, it seems the answer is yes. Whether it’ll actually be good is another question entirely. The zombie survival genre is already oversaturated and past its peak, so The Day Before needs to do something very special to stand out.
As if that wasn’t enough, it’s muddy reputation means players will approach it with a lot of skepticism and perhaps be even more critical of it. It needs to prove more than ever that it was worth the wait and fans were right to have faith in it. If not, The Day Before may become another infamous video game flop.
