Publisher Deep Silver announced a sequel to the hit zombie game Dead Island way back in 2014, but since then, not much has been known about the title. However, recent comments from the company seem to suggest the game is close to releasing.
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In a recent Q&A session for its Q3 FY2021/22 report, Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors was asked about whether or not the game was still alive, and could be expected in the upcoming financial year. “People have sort of written off [Dead Island 2], not knowing if it’s still alive,” said Carnegie equity research analyst Oscar Erixon, who hosted the Q&A session. “But it very clearly is. I, at least, expect the release … next financial year, I should say. Is that reasonable? What can we expect from the title? It’s been in development for probably ten years or so.”
Wingefors didn’t exactly confirm the news but did hint that it might be coming in 2023, saying that a title that may or may not be Dead Island 2 is in the works for a release next year.
“I can’t talk about Dead Island 2 because it’s not announced, as such, from the publisher, but we have just talked about—we have one unannounced triple-A title that you think is Dead Island 2,” Wingefors said. “It’s hard for me to comment further on that. But I’m excited about unannounced titles.”
The history of Dead Island 2 is a complicated one, as the game was initially announced at Sony’s E3 2014 media briefing. Techland — the developer behind the Dying Light series — was originally set to handle the creation of the game, but instead chose to focus on developing Dying Light. Deep Silver then settled on Yager Development as the maker of the game, but that also fell through in 2015, when the developer was dropped in favor of Sumo Digital, who was then dropped in 2019 for Dambuster Studios, an internal studio at Deep Silver.
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Since 2019’s latest development, Deep Silver has insisted that the game is still in production by Dambuster Studios. Not much has been talked of since then, although a playable version of the game did leak in 2020, leading many to think the title would be coming around then. However, no news has come as of yet, so fans will have to hope that this unannounced game is their chance to return to the zombie-infested world of Dead Island.
