


In 2016, Sumo Digital took over developmental duties, only for the British studio to also abandon the project two or three years later. Dead Island 2 was originally going to be made by Yager, the same team that gave the world the exceptional and harrowing Spec Ops: The Lineback in 2012, but creative differences forced the publishers and developers apart.

So why have things taken so long to materialize? The main reason seems to be that although Deep Silver has been keen on a sequel, retaining any consistency with regard to the proposed title's developers has been a trickier task. While nothing was explicitly stated, the impression was that neither Embracer nor Deep Silver had given up hope on the project. In February of this year, during a presentation at Embracer, the company that owns Deep Silver and recently acquired a host of other valuable studios, it was cryptically teased by Embracer SEO Lars Wingefors that there were still plans for a release at the end of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023. The good news is that publisher Deep Silver hasn't abandoned a sequel to the original Dead Island, with the next installment still slated for release some time in 2023.
