Like a zombie you thought you shot in the head but actually just clipped in the thorax, survival game fiasco The Day Before is still twitching unpleasantly in the corner. Except, in this case, it's not really The Day Before at all, but rather a game that for some reason is pretending to be The Day Before, and it's not really a game at all. Allow me to explain.

A quick recap of the events so far: After much hype and several delays, The Day Before launched on Steam in December 2023, and it was a disaster—so bad that just days after release, sales were halted and developer Fntastic closed its doors. Refunds were offered and feeble defenses made, but the studio bosses basically fell off the face of the Earth and it eventually came to light that the whole thing was an even bigger goat rodeo behind the scenes than anyone could have guessed.

All told, it was very weird, but this is even weirder. A listing for another game calling itself The Day Before has now appeared on Steam (via PCGamesN), which at first glance looks the same as the original, including the names of the developer and publisher. But dig a little deeper and it quickly becomes clear that it's kind of a half-assed copy—a quick-and-dirty knockoff that's not meant to stand up to close scrutiny.

For clarity, this is the “real” Steam listing for The Day Before.

And this is the fake.

Switch over to SteamDB and you'll see the listing for the “new” Day Before has a long and very sketchy history. Prior to taking the name of The Day Before, it briefly carried the title GTA Brasil, “the next chapter of the Grand Theft Auto saga … where the sun-soaked beaches meet the pulsating rhythm of samba.”

That title was only put into place three days ago: Prior to that, it was known as Carrot the Cat, a “cartoony platformer [that] offers vibrant stylized graphics, challenging levels, and endless charm.” Carrot the Cat is the title that actually appears at the top of the SteamDB listing, even though everything else has been switched over to The Day Before.

The title of the game in the very first SteamDB entry, in fact, is Carrot the Cat (The Day Before).

Being the curious sort, I took a look at Carrot the Cat, and as far as I can tell it's… nothing at all. Attempting to install it resulted in a few bytes of data being downloaded, but the resulting directory in /steamapps/common is empty.

Things took a twist at around 1:30 pm today, when an update appeared on the Steam page for the fake Day Before claiming that “Carrot the Cat is the codename for the return of TDB.”

“We are partnering with a studio who we won't share its name for legal reasons, but we can assure you all that everything is under control,” the update says. “The game will have its files updated shortly! With a major compression from 55 GB to 13 GB!”

And an update has indeed appeared: My Steam library now says a 990MB update is now available to download.

But you know what? I think I won't do that, and I would strongly urge you not to either. I have no idea what the point of all this is, but I suspect it's nothing good, a feeling reinforced by the fact that the developer eventually traces back to something currently calling itself Dreamrise Studios, whose website is made up of lorem ipsum placeholder text and stock images. 

And let us not forget that the listing for Carrot the Cat first appeared on SteamDB a good four months before The Day Before launched, an odd bit of timing for a game that purports to be an updated version.

It's all very strange and probably stupid, but the bigger concern is that developers are able to get away with this kind of nonsense in the first place. People in the know might not be fooled, but casual TDB followers may be curious enough to jump in with both feet on the promise of a comeback. Worse, while the original Day Before doesn't appear in Steam searches because it's no longer available for purchase, this fake version now does. It's a situation that really highlights the weaknesses inherent in Steam's freewheeling ways: Regardless of the intent of the people behind this thing, the simple fact that they can do this with no oversight, or even the most rudimentary of security checks, is a big problem.

Is it possible that this is the first step toward a real comeback for The Day Before? Hey, it's possible I'll win the lottery, or that my dog will learn to stop assaulting Squeezy Chicken when I tell him to. But is it likely? I'm going to give that one a hard no.

I've reached out to Steam and Mytona, the publisher of the “real” Day Before, for comment and will update if I receive a reply. In the meantime, my advice stands: Steer clear.