Overview

• Weeks after the E3 2014 trailer, playtesters labeled the original build “horrific” and said it failed to capture the essence of Dead Island.
• Deep Silver scrapped the initial version by Yager, reassigned work to Sumo Digital, then moved development in-house to Dambuster Studios in 2019.
• Those studio changes and a comprehensive reboot extended the project by eight years and cost millions more in development.
• Wein warned that releasing the flawed early build would have generated sales but risked “killing the franchise.”
• Dead Island 2’s April 2023 launch sold over two million copies in its first month, marking Deep Silver’s biggest game debut.