Dead Island 2’s development cycle was a troubled one, evidenced by the fact that the game was announced in 2015 and didn’t release until 2023. The game also had three different developers, with the third and final studio on the project, Dambuster, finally shipping the game.
In a talk at Develop:Brighton, former Deep Silver (publisher of Dead Island) head of communications Martin Wein was very candid in speaking about the development of Dead Island 2, explaining that early play test feedback was “horrific” (reported byGamesIndustry.Biz).
“We had a major milestone with [Yager] that was in charge at the time. And boy, that game sucked,” Wein recounted. “It had nothing to do with what [made] the original Dead Island […] really fun. So we commissioned a playtest and got horrific feedback. And we set down the development team and said ‘Okay, what’s the course of action?’ and they said ‘Yeah, leave it with us.'”
Unfortunately, Yager hadn’t fixed the problems by the next check-in period, so Deep Silver moved development of the game to Sumo Digital.
“Sometimes you have to make the hard decisions,” Wein explained. “Because we could have, at that point, put out a sh*t game. It might have made some money, but it would have killed the franchise.”
“I cannot really speak to the conversation between the production team and the development partner as I was not part of those, but the developer wanted to pursue their vision rather than follow player feedback, the ultimate decision was made to part ways.”
Dead Island 2 was eventually moved once more from Sumo Digital to Dambuster, who would eventually ship the game in 2022 after a re-reveal the year before.
In her3.5/5 review of Dead Island 2, our own Jade King said, “Dead Island 2 isn’t going to change the world of zombie games, nor does it intend to, but the fact it has emerged from the ashes in a state this immaculate is a miracle in itself.”
There’s been no announcement or rumours emerging from Deep Silver about a potential Dead Island 3, but hopefully it won’t take a decade this time.
