The Day Before may just go down in history as one of the worst video game launches ever. Despite that, keys for the game are selling for bafflingly high prices online.
The internet has collectively concluded that Fntastic’s The Day Before is at best hot garbage and at worst, a demonstrable scam. It launched riddled with bugs and players have suggested that the gameplay greatly differs from what was shown pre-release.
As a result, The Day Before lost over 90% of its player base in a matter of days and Fntastic closed its studio entirely. Following the closure, refunds were offered for the game and a spokesperson for the studio succinctly summed up the issue with a simple “s**t happens”.
The Day Before has also been removed from Steam due to the poor state of the game which has caused an anomaly of sorts. Keys for The Day Before are now selling online for exorbitant prices.
When we say exorbitant, we mean over ten times what the game was selling for at launch. As a reformed sneakerhead, I know a thing or two about how limiting a product can dramatically increase its resale value but this is a strange one.
Gamepur’s coverage of the phenomenon suggests there’s a reason the game could be selling for such high prices despite its many well-documented flaws. Content creators are looking to cover just how terrible the game is and it’s possible that savvy investors could be taking advantage of the demand for the game.
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A Tweet from YouTuber Garrus lends some weight to the theory given they were the one to reveal how much prices for the game had been jacked up. “I can’t believe they are selling The Day Before keys for 200 € each,” Garrus wrote in the (translated) Tweet.
“They are speculating with a scam that can no longer be purchased on Steam because there are more morons like me who want to prove how bad this game is,” they said. Whether or not this is the only reason the game is selling for such high prices is a speculation of its own of course.
No me puedo creer que estén vendiendo claves de The Day Before a 200€ cada una. Están ESPECULANDO con una estafa que ya no se puede comprar en Steam porque hay más subnormales como yo que quieren probar cómo de malo es este juego.Nunca me había sentido tan acompañado 🥹 pic.twitter.com/icjsuZKs9S
— Garrus (@SrGarrus) December 18, 2023
It’s possible that these scalpers view the game as a sort of collector’s item now that it has been removed from a major storefront. They could also be taking advantage of video game preservationists.
We don’t want to tell you how to spend your money but if the general consensus is that the game wasn’t worth its original price tag, it’s probably not worth five to ten times that amount.