Game development can be a very fickle thing. While we have borne witness to some of the best the industry has to offer, the gaming industry also has its lows, partly due to the fact that some titles in development never see the light of day due to cancellation.
What’s probably worse, however, is the dreaded development hell. Dead Island 2, for all intents and purposes, still exists – but deep within this limbo. The direct sequel to Techland’s first person zombie action game Dead Island was announced five years ago, way back in 2014 during Sony’s E3 media briefing. It was since slated for a Q2 2015 release, a mark it has now missed for four years.
During those years, all we have to show for Dead Island 2 was that somewhat entertaining cinematic trailer, plus a gameplay demonstration made during Gamescom 2014. What’s certainly even more telling of the overall situation is the fact that Deep Silver, the publisher for the Dead Island series, remained silent all throughout this time, only telling fans, players, and media that Dead Island 2 is still happening.
This situation remains largely unchanged with the recent financial call for THQ Nordic, who is a major shareholder in Deep Silver. Last week’s presentations covered a lot of business updates with regards to THQ Nordic's operations, but it did shed some light as to titles currently in development across the THQ Nordic banner. This was when CEO Lars Wingefors briefly mentioned Dead Island 2, stating that it is still “being worked on,” and that fans of the series should “stay tuned.” That’s it.
While this is nothing new in terms of game development, there is some cause for worry among some of the fans of Dead Island, mostly due to the fact that the title’s pushback was caused by changing development teams. Techland abandoned the series after the first iteration to work on Dying Light, which led to Yager Development stepping up to the plate back in 2012. This is the same team behind Spec Ops: The Line. In 2015, with the game three years into development, publisher Deep Silver cuts ties with Yager and gave the title to Sumo Digital, the developer behind Crackdown 3.
Deep Silver currently has its hands full with Shemue III, which is slated for release on August 27, 2019.
