For Propnight studio Fntastic's open-world zombie survival game in development, "The Day Before" (opens in new tab), it was a super-anomalous ride: second only to "Hogwarts Legacy" on Steam on the wish list. Despite being the first game on the list, and despite almost nothing being known about it, The Day Before was completely removed from Steam a few days before Fntastic showed off its first live gameplay in two years.

In a statement released on January 25 (opens in new tab), Fntastic states that the removal was the result of a trademark claim against the title, which it first learned of on January 19. Because of the dispute, the scheduled gameplay release was put on hold and the release date was pushed back from March 1 to November 10.

However, in a new interview with IGN (opens in new tab), Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev, founders of Fntastic, stated that the delay was indeed planned before the trademark dispute came to light.

"We were planning to move the release of the game forward, and we were going to announce it with a 10-minute gameplay video with [publisher] Mytona. And you all know what happened after that." So, to be on the safe side and to make sure there were no more transfers, we chose November 10 with the publisher. Given the trademark disputes, that is a safe date."

The Gotovtsevs also acknowledged accusations from followers that The Day Before does not actually exist or is some sort of scam, stating, "It is unpleasant to hear such accusations." [neither crowdfunding, nor pre-orders, nor donations. The game is fully funded by Mytona, one of the largest mobile publishers in the world, and Mytona checks the build of the game at every milestone according to their contract."

This really sums up what I find mysterious about the whole thing: both Fntastic and Mytona are established gaming companies, and while "The Day Before" could be wish-listed on Steam, it could not actually be pre-ordered! The Day Before" could be wish-listed on Steam, but could not be actually pre-ordered. From that perspective, this all seems like a very simple case of a developer grossly underestimating the time needed to complete and release a game, and then delaying it appropriately. So why the trademark dispute?"; "Why did you initially blame The Day Before's removal from Steam on a "known bug that affected multiple titles in the past" that would be fixed as part of Steam's regular maintenance?" in the IGN interview, did not address this apparent contradiction.

It is possible that Fntastic is simply struggling to figure out what is going on and that the "volunteers" (open in new tab) they hire are not completely in the loop. However, as staff writer Morgan Park notes in her in-depth analysis (opens in new tab) of "The Day Before mystery," some legitimate red flags are flying, especially in relation to the fact that they know almost nothing about the game.

"The Day Before's official Discord has a 'Frequently Asked Questions' section, but it is not very good at answering questions." Basic questions like "Will there be quests?" or "Are there other types of rides?" are all undecided." And this was back when the game was still scheduled to be released on March 1.

Fntastic said on Twitter that the promised Day Before gameplay footage would be released after it received permission from its lawyers. In the case of a simple trademark dispute, that also seems a bit odd to me, but then again, I'm not a lawyer, so perhaps such caution is warranted. Regardless, I look forward to seeing it.