Controversial Early Access game The Day Before has seen its player count fall almost 90% after just four days and entered Steam's 10 worst reviewed games of all time list.
Data from player tracking website SteamDB shows The Day Before peaked at 38,104 concurrent users at launch on December 7 but, four days later at the time of writing, that number has dropped to 4,125. That's an 89% decrease.
The number saw a harsh drop-off on December 8 but, unusually, even saw slight decreases into the weekend as well. Games typically launch during the week and player counts peak over the following weekend when more people have time to play.
The Finals launched on Steam on Friday, December 8 and peaked at 200,677 concurrent players, for example, but rose further to 221,396 on Saturday and 242,619 on Sunday. They Day Before saw the opposite effect, dropping to a peak of 9,319 concurrent players on Saturday and 7,690 on Sunday.
Amid a sea of complaints, users on Reddit have also claimed to have asked for a refund following alleged unkept promises by developer Fntastic. One poll with 968 votes at the time of writing asked players if they had kept The Day Before or had it refunded. 150 said they were keeping it while 818 asked for a refund.
Player feedback is otherwise clear on The Day Before's Steam page, where the game has an "overwhelmingly negative" rating with only 20% of users recommending it. This saw it enter Steam's worst 10 user reviewed games of all time list, where it sits in ninth place. War of the Three Kingdoms tops the list, followed by Overwatch 2, NBA 2K24, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Flatout 3: Chaos and Destruction, Identity, Uriel's Charm, Spacebase DF-9, The Day Before, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Battle Operation 2 in 10th.
Controversy has surrounded The Day Before for a long time, but post-launch backlash is perhaps the worst Fntastic has seen. Players slammed the game for not being the open world, survival MMO that was promised, but instead a simple extraction shooter.
Its launch as an Early Access title was only revealed a month prior in November 2023 too, with players otherwise expecting a full release on PC and console. This came after several other delays, accusations of copying other games more than once, and a beta that was only accessible to those who participated in unpaid work for Fntastic.
You can read about the full strange saga of The Day Before here.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
