Delaying this multiplayer take on The Last of Us is a good thing

techradar.com:

Multiplayer zombie game The Day Before has just been hit with a major delay, pushing its release from March all the way to the end of the year. Though, judging by the gameplay footage, the experience of the developer, and the scope of the game, it may be for the best. Especially, as developer Fntastic Games will be competing with an official multiplayer version of The Last Of Us – which is probably the easiest way of describing The Day Before.

With development dragging on The Last of Us 2's multiplayer, this is the perfect time for a developer to sneak in and snaffle that apocalyptic pudding, but one of its main competitors, The Day Before, is getting even further away from release. The developer has «made the difficult decision to postpone the launch,» it said in a tweet(opens in new tab). Fntastic Games is now aiming for November 10, 2023.

In part, this delay seems to be because of a, frankly, bizarre twist of events. Someone other than the game developer has gone and copyrighted the name The Day Before. The copyright holder has even taken down The Day Before’s Steam page.

Fntastic Games isn’t known for having great success when working to a deadline. The previous release date was March 1, 2023, but even this announcement came on the heels of a year-long delay while the team transitioned The Day Before to Unreal Engine 5. 

If you’ve played The Last Of Us, or any number of other games set in the apocalypse, The Day Before’s fundamentals may sound familiar. Set in a post-pandemic America, you and a group of friends must grapple with the infected undead and unfriendly survivors to compete for food, water, and shelter. An open-world survival MMO is hardly groundbreaking in the zombie genre. 

Since its announcement at the start