During a Develop:Brighton panel, Martin Wein, former Deep Silver Head of Communications, elaborated on why it took eight years to release Dead Island 2. Read on to learn more about what caused the delay and the history of Dead Island 2’s development.
Dead Island 2’s 8-Year Delay Caused By Overwhelmingly Negative Feedback from First Playtest
Releasing Dead Island 2 in 2015 "Would Have Killed the Franchise"
Dead Island 2, the successor to the famous horror action RPG Dead Island, experienced an eight-year-long delay that was widely reported on prior to its official release in 2023. Though this journey to release was well-documented, Dead Island 2 publisher Deep Silver (Saints Row, Dead Island, Metro) did not elaborate on the finer details of what started the near-decade-long delay in the first place. Martin Wein, GameFlex consultant, recently discussed the issues surrounding Dead Island 2’s development at a Develop:Brighton talk on Product/Market Fit. He explained that Dead Island 2’s 2015 release was postponed indefinitely because the game could not meet the expectations of Dead Island fans.
During the Q&A panel, he used Dead Island 2 as an example of how a development team stalled the release of the game and how player research allowed them to bounce back. In 2014, Wein was the head of communications for Deep Silver, and he recalled the time wherein they and development studio Yager Studios received so much negative player feedback that they were forced to reassess the direction they wanted to take with the zombie-infested action RPG sequel.
When the first Dead Island 2 trailer was released at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), fans had been surprised by the complete 180 from the tone adopted by the trailer of the first game. The blatant departure in mood showed that the game’s identity was clear, but it was later discovered that this clarity did not translate to the core experience of the gameplay.
Following the successful release of Dead Island 2’s trailer, Deep Silver commissioned a playtest that yielded surprising results. According to Wein, Dead Island 2 had been a completely different experience compared to the first Dead Island game. Participants of the playtest reported that Dead Island 2 was neither fun nor engaging, and did "not feel like the Dead Island that [they] played."
Although Deep Silver and Yager Studios continued to work on improving Dead Island 2’s gameplay, their efforts only seemed to yield more friction.
After conducting further research and analyses on the playerbase, Deep Silver reportedly "saw a clear divide between player expectation and motivation and the direction that game development had taken." Soon after, Deep Silver made the decision to continue working on Dead Island 2 with a different developer.
Wein’s words echo the statement Yager Studios’ Managing Director, Timo Ullman, gave to GameIndustry.biz back in 2015 regarding the split: "Yager and Deep Silver’s respective visions of the project fell out of alignment."
"Sometimes you have to make hard decisions," said Wein. "Because we could have, at that point, put out a shit game. It might have made some money, but it would have killed the franchise."
Although Deep Silver had gained a better grasp of the direction they wanted to steer Dead Island 2, it took them eight more years to release the game.
Jumping From One Developer to Another
Prior to its official release on April 21, 2023, Dead Island 2 had been passed around from developer to developer for a total of three times. Dead Island 2 started out under Techland, who first conceptualized the Dead Island series and developed the first Dead Island game. However, they were eventually taken off the Dead Island 2 project, after which they became a developer under Warner Bros. and went on to complete Dying Light, another survival horror game featuring a zombie apocalypse.
Following Techland’s exit, Dead Island 2 was passed on to Yager Studios, the German video game developer responsible for Spec Ops: The Line. Deep Silver and Yager Studios were able to successfully work with one another for a time, but once it became clear that Yager Studios could not fulfill Deep Silver’s aims to appeal to Dead Island fans, they moved on to Sumo Digital.
Sumo Digital, developer of LittleBigPlanet 3, Team Sonic Racing, and most recently, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, stepped in to work on Dead Island 2 in 2016. Unlike Yager Studios and Techland, however, details on the development period were scarcely reported on for 3 years–-until 2019, when a THQ Nordic financial report revealed that Sumo Digital was no longer working on Dead Island 2.
Apparently, Dead Island 2 had been passed on to Dambuster Studios in 2018. David Stenton, Deep Silver Dambuster Studios Director, told PCGamer that Dead Island 2 had been "built from scratch" by the time they released the Dead Island 2 Re-Announcement Trailer in 2022.
"Dead Island 2 was a commercial success in the end," said Wein. "Because [Deep Silver] took that step, and they said that we need to make a game that fits for the player."
Dead Island 2 was finally released in 2023 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Despite the time it took to release the game, it received positive reviews, reached 10 million players by October 2024, and sold 4 million units by February 2025, becoming the biggest launch in the history of Deep Silver.
Source:
"It would have killed the franchise." Insights into the scrapped 2014 version of Dead Island 2
Yager dropped from Dead Island 2 after 3 years
The messy 9-year development of Dead Island 2
Twitter/X: 10 Million Slayers
