The Day Before studio seemingly attempts to scrub itself from Steam by changing back to its 2017 name, amid review-bombing campaign of its entire catalog

The developer of The Day Before appears to be attempting to scrub itself from Steam after the implosion of its 'survival MMO'.

Yesterday, just four days after The Day Before released to appalling Steam reviews, developer Fntastic announced that the game had failed financially, and the studio would be closing down. The history of The Day Before is a truly bizarre one - once the most-wishlisted game on Steam, it eventually transpired that the game billed as a survival MMO was no such thing. After rumors of a refund rate as high as 46%, Fantastic abruptly closed up shop, and the game was pulled from sale.

Now, there are concerns that the studio is attempting to cover its tracks. Over the past 24 hours, The Day Before and the studio's previous game, Propnight, both saw their developers change, as documented via SteamDB. Both games changed their listed developer from 'Fntastic' to 'Mytona Fntastic' for a few hours, before changing back to 'Fntastic'. Mytona, the game's publisher, recently confirmed refunds for all those who purchased The Day Before, regardless of the traditional two hour refund window on Steam.

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Elsewhere, another of the studio's games, 2019 survival co-op game The Wild Eight, has seen its developer renamed to Eight Points. As Steam sleuths have worked out, however, that's just the name that Fntastic went by before changing to its current name in 2017 - that change was even proudly announced by the studio's CEO in a development update about The Wild Eight.

So, FNTASTIC is changing all of their other games on Steam to different companies.Who is 'Eight Points' and why do they now own The Wild Eight?Some shits going on lol pic.twitter.com/U0XpmtgeKYDecember 11, 2023

The Wild Eight and Propnight have both seen their recent reviews tank over the past few days. The former sports 'Mostly Negative' recent reviews focused on the track record of its developer. Propnight's recent reviews are 'Mixed', but as well as Fntastic's efforts with The Day Before, those reviews mention that the game's servers appear to have been switched off, rendering the multiplayer prop hunt game functionally unplayable.

It's not clear exactly why Fntastic made these changes, nor why they were swiftly reversed. However, the community's theory is that the studio is attempting to scrub evidence of its name from Steam, either in an attempt to maximize revenue from its older games, or to dodge a potential lawsuit, rumblings of which have already begun among the vestiges of The Day Before's community. As for why the names changed back, I imagine Mytona wasn't particularly pleased to be ensnared in this situation any more than it already has been.

For what it's worth, here's our The Day Before review.

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.