‘Dead Island 2’ Canceled Or Not? Publisher Breaks Silence, Insists Sequel Still In ‘Progress’

There is still hope for Deep Silver’s “Dead Island 2” to see the light of the day.

For more than a year now, there’s been no update about the “Dead Island” sequel that was announced back in 2013. So it comes as a surprise that publisher Deep Silver recently opened up about the game’s development. Just this Monday, the publisher was asked by Eurogamer about the game and it reassured the latter that “Dead Island 2” is still in the works.

“‘Dead Island 2’ is in development at Sumo Digital, and we are excited by the progress the team are making with Deep Silver’s most successful IP,” the publisher said in a statement. It also noted in that more details about the sequel will be released when they’re ready. “When we are ready to share more information, we will.”

Eurogamer expressed its concern over the game as it once heard of a rumor claiming the development of the sequel fell through once again. However, since Deep Silver sounds optimistic about the project now, it seems fans don’t need to worry about it anymore. But then again, there is still no specific information about the exact release date of “Dead Island 2” as of now. So fans shouldn’t get their hopes up just yet.

“Dead Island 2” was supposed to launch back in spring 2015. However, some issues caused “Spec Ops: The Line” maker Yager to part ways with Deep Silver that same year. Yager revealed at the time that it’s vision for the sequel fell out of alignment with Deep Silver.

Yager worked on “Dead Island 2” for three years. After cutting ties with Deep Silver, Yager went on to make “Dying Light,” an open world first person survival action-adventure game that’s also zombie-themed, as per PC Gamer. On the other hand, the publisher revealed in March 2016 that Sumo Digital was taking over the unfinished sequel. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any update about the game since then.

Last year, the Steam page for the game was removed, causing fans to speculate that the title was unceremoniously canceled. Nevertheless, there were also speculations at the time that the removal of the page was indicative of a re-reveal of the sequel at a later date with a different page, as first reported by VG 24/7.

Deep Silver’s statement comes a month after a job listing was found to be hinting at the continued development of the project. The job listing that was leaked via NeoGAF was from Sumo Digital and it mentioned the games the studio was still working on. “We are also incredibly proud to be working on the highly anticipated ’Crackdown 3‘ (Xbox One) and ‘Dead Island 2’ (multi-platform) plus several other exciting but yet unannounced projects.” Sumo also indicated in the listing that “2017 will be Sumo’s biggest and best year ever.” Could this be a hint that “Dead Island 2” will likely be released this year?

Meanwhile, the “Dead Island - Definitive Edition” was released last year in the absence of the sequel. The remastered edition came with all of the previously released DLC on top of new content.