The Day Before devs say a calendar app stole their trademark, YouTube is delisting their videos, and no doubt the dog’s eyeing up their homework

Fntastic says the copyright holder has been in touch, but the studio seems suspicious of his intentions.

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Fntastic, the studio behindThe Day Before, has released yet another statement regarding the state of the game and its ongoing trademark dispute. In a short post on Twitter yesterday afternoon, Fntastic said that its trademark has apparently been snaffled by a calendar app, that its videos have been taken down from YouTube as a result of trademark issue, and that the current holder of the trademark has offered to discuss things with the studio. The studio followed up its tweet with a link toa delisted YouTube videowhich—per theWayback Machine—used to show a clip of someone playing The Day Before on PC.

#thedaybefore pic.twitter.com/2q98hE1i9fFebruary 12, 2023

The statement says only that the “so-called ‘owner’” of The Day Before’s trademark is the “creator of the calendar app”. Fntastic doesn’t explicitly name or link it, but I have to assume that the app in question isTheDayBefore (D-Day Countdown)from TheDayBefore Inc. When Fntastic firstannounced its trademark troubles, it looked like its game’s name had been nabbed by a South Korean applicant, and that app isa South Korean product, after all.

So, does it look like matters are on their way to being resolved? Not really! Fntastic says that the app creator “ambiguously offers to contact him [sic] to discuss something, but what?” I’m not a copyright lawyer but I’d imagine what he wants to discuss is the disputed trademark, yet the tone of Fntastic’s statement makes it sound like the studio isn’t keen to enter that discussion itself.

The studio concludes its statement with a rallying cry: “We’ll fight. Power is in the truth,” which might have gone over better if Fntastic hadn’t burnt pretty much every shred of goodwill it’s ever had over the course of the last couple of months. As it is, it just feels like the studio has fallen victim to its own blunders, and statements like these come off as a desperate attempt to recast itself in the role of an underdog, an attempt which, predictably,hasn’t gone down well with its audience.

So it’s not going well, and it stillreallyfeels like Fntastic desperately needs to hire a proper marketing team instead of firing off Twitter statements like this one andthe one it put out last week decrying “disinformation”. I keep thinking Fntastic has hit the nadir with its former fans, yet somehow I keep being proven wrong.

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One of Josh’s first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he’s been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He’ll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin’s Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you’re all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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