The Day Before Delayed to November Due to Trademark Issues

Open world MMO survival game The Day Before, one of the most wishlisted upcoming titles on Steam, has been delayed again. This time, though, the official reason is quite perplexing. According to developer Fntastic and publisher MYTONA, someone else beat me on the registration of the trademark in the United States, which prompted Steam to block the game’s page at the request of the registrant, Sun Jae Lee from Seoul, South Korea.

The Day Before is officially delayed from March 1st to November 10th. Here’s the full message shared on Twitter this morning.

Dear fans!
Right before the release, Steam blocked our game page at the request of a private individual, because of the name The Day Before.
As you know, our game was announced in January 2021. At the time of the announcement, The Day Before game trademark was available.
After the announcement of the game, the above mentioned individual filled out an application before us to register the game trademark The Day Before in the United States: https://uspto.report/TM/79314174

What’s next?
Previously, we were not aware of the existence of claims. We found out about this only on January 19, 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. We will post a video asap.
As a result, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the launch to November 10, 2023. We understand this may disappoint many of our fans, however we want to ensure we release the best possible game.
Our 100% focus remains on the game itself and how to deliver you the best game possible. Thank you and we hope for your support.

The delay news is puzzling because the trademark situation could be easily solved by reaching an agreement with Sun Jae Lee. Afterward, there would be no reason Fntastic and MYTONA cannot release The Day Before right away. A more likely reason could be the need to polish and fix the game itself. In any case, we’ve sent a list of questions to the developers; stay tuned for the interview.