The Day Before is one of the most highly-anticipated games on Steam, with thousands of players eager to explore the zombie world.
Interestingly enough, the game is pretty much shrouded in mystery, with very few moments of gameplay actually shown to players. Now, to add to the mystery, the Steam page went offline on Jan. 24 and eager fans have been clamoring to find out why.
According to SteamDB, it looks like The Day Before was removed from Steam around six to seven hours ago, at around 4.25pm CT. For a while, no one was sure why, with many loading up the game’s Discord to express their fears and complaints. At the same time, a message was shared by the title’s head moderator, WHOLF, that suggested there was a Steam bug.
Many players were unsure of why the game would be removed from Steam and this only served to feed into some players’ fears the game is facing issues. However, according to a post in Discord, “This is a known bug that has affected multiple titles in the past.”
Some pointed out that if it’s a known bug then surely Valve would be prepared to fix it before the game is down for six-plus hours. Others have stated there are no other games that have been affected by this bug except The Day Before, which turned out to be because the game was specifically removed on purpose.
According to developers FNTASTIC, the game was removed after the person who actually owns the name “The Day Before” requested to do so. According to the site shared by the devs, the current trademark holder in the U.S. is someone named Sun Jae Lee.
The developer also confirmed the title’s first gameplay video is expected to be delayed past its initial release date sometime in the next week. FNTASTIC will be consulting with the lawyers, they said, before releasing a gameplay trailer. However, it seems many players in the game’s Discord aren’t holding their breath.
The new release date for the game has been moved to Nov. 10, 2023, which is almost 10 months from today and eight months past its most recent release date.
As players have seen little marketing and almost no gameplay, the hype that was built around this game has slowly been diminishing. If all the game needs is a name change, many want to know why it’s going to simmer for another eight months, at least.
With the rest of 2023 uncertain for FNTASTIC, many are beginning to question if there will ever be a The Day Before game at all. While it was possible to hold out hope so far, many are feeling let down by the lack of communication from the developers.
As of publication, the devs have not addressed any further concerns.
