Dead Island 2 No Longer Being Developed by YAGER

In a press release sent this afternoon, Publisher Deep Silver has announced that Dead Island 2 will no longer be developed by YAGER, the studio behind Spec Ops: The Line:

With Dead Island 2, Deep Silver has always been dedicated to delivering the sequel that Dead Island fans deserve.

After careful consideration, today we announce the decision to part ways with development partner YAGER. We will continue working towards bringing our vision of Dead Island 2 to life, and we will share further information at a later stage.

Dead Island 2 debuted with a CG trailer at Sony's 2014 E3 press conference, with further details and gameplay footage coming out of last year's Gamescom. Though that gameplay footage was all marked as pre-alpha, interviews with YAGER development staff reveal that the team had been aiming for a Spring 2015 release. In April, Deep Silver announced that the game had been delayed until 2016.

The first Dead Island was developed for Deep Silver by Techland, but that studio left the franchise behind to instead develop spiritual successor Dying Light for Warner Brothers. While Techland switched up Dead Island's design by introducing free-running and a day-night cycle, YAGER's take on a Dead Island sequel sought to build on the first game's multiplayer focus. Set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, Dead Island 2 was going to feature 8 player, drop-in drop-out co-op, repeatable quests, dual wielding, and on-the-spot crafting.

At this point, it's hard to know what the future of Dead Island 2 will be. Will Deep Silver bring in a new studio to finish the work YAGER started, or will a new game be built from the ground up? Is the publisher's "vision" for Dead Island 2 incompatible with the design (or budget) of YAGER's project? How (if at all) did Dying Light's success affect Dead Island 2's development?

I'm curious to see how this will all shake out and what the future will look like for both YAGER and the Dead Island franchise.

Wow the bombcast must've reminded Deep Silver that there was still a Dead Island 2.

Is Dead Island worth the hassle anymore? I wonder if this is the end.

I feel like any goodwill for that franchise is dead in a way that will find it hard to reanimate, especially with Techland kind of nailing Dying Light for that audience.

I guess all Dead Island games are destined to be dumpster fires? I remember the launch of the first game as a total train-wreck, with the wrong build pushed out on Steam. It was the only game I've ever played in which tapping a certain key would crash the game 100% of the time. It also had no-clip and a third person camera.

I see what you did there. You didn't think I would but I see it.

Dead Island: Epidemic is actually rather cool.

Dying Light was all the Dead Island I need. I'm doubtful this game sees the light of day or if it does that it will be anything other than a hot load of garbage.

Is a publishers 'vision' for a game ever more than "sells a lot of copies"? I was under the impression that the developers were the ones to create a vision.

RIP YAGER.

I'm actually kinda bummed...

I really enjoyed Spec Ops and was really curisous to see how they would tackle the franchise that shouldn't exist (at least riptide shouldn't)

That is unfortunate to hear.

"GAARRHRLRHL"

"Ok ok but what are my deductibles?"

(Austin this was all your fault)

I guess you could say YAGER...bombed.

Man, I wonder WTF happened. Thats a pretty big deal to pull this when it was supposed to be 6 months or w/e away.

Delayed into 2016, it WAS already delayed into 2015. This is terrible and hilarious but terrible.

Considering the number of survival games that have been released over the past couple of years, another Dead Island game would be redundant unless there were significant changes to the formula.

Someone had to do it. Thank you, good sir.

Welp. Never a good sign.

Development hell.

@alistercat said:

I mean, companies that are publisher/developers can have a publisher/developer-wide brand, for which they'd like people to associate them with a certain level of quality or a certain style of game. But honestly, that only applies to Nintendo, Sega in the 90s, and maybe sorta Square Enix? Sony, Microsoft, Activision, EA, Capcom, and Ubisoft seem like they kinda just put out whatever pays the bills at the moment, whether it has vision or not. Deep Silver is sure as fuck in that latter category as well.

There at point where might as well finish the game even if its on fire. But I hope there honest about condition its in when release it so we can avoid Arkham knight issues.

I imagine that Deep Silver was terrified that they might actually put their name on something that isn't completely terrible and told YAGER to get out.

I remember seeing that trailer of Dead Island with the family and the little girl getting thrown off the building and getting very hyped up for it.

The atmosphere and tone of that trailer was what I was hoping for the final release. Unfortunately it was nothing like that and it sucked.

Yager could've probably released a game with a similar tone to that trailer so this news does nothing but disappoint.

@baka_shinji17 Nice !

Uh ohhh

I feel like Yager was probably going to make Dead Island 2 less janky than it should have been, and have more depth of story so they got cut.

I'm almost certain the saw Dying Light and tried to change a lot of things.

So just let Human Head work on Dead Island 2 while Yager works on Prey 2. Everybody wins!

Dead island 2? I think you mean dying light 2

Let's hope this isn't a step towards Yager's closure, and rather means they can now work on a genre that hasn't totally been overcrowded in the past couple of years.

So what's dead here: Dead Island 2 or Yager?

After Spec Ops The Line, Dead Island 2 is the last thing I wanted YAGER to make. The whole MO of Spec Ops was it was a captivating story with mediocre to aright gameplay. That's kinda not what you want from a Dead Island game.

I was really hoping to see Yager step it up and become a developer who didn't make the same kind of games as everyone else. Spec Ops was such a good little surprise of a game I was curious to see what they could do with Dead Island.

Fuck.. I was cautiously optimistic about this one, having loved dead island to death and not considering dying light a good enough follow up (no analog combat? GTFO), now all the hope is gone....

@finaldasa:im more curious to see what yager does now. Dead Island 2 looked the same as most other zombie games. I hope they push the envelope like they did with spec ops. We will see

If Yager survives this, I hope their next project better utilizes their talents. The move from Spec Ops: The Line to a Dead Island game just never seemed quite right to me.

I just caught up to the Bombcast episode where they talked about the lack of Dead Island 2 at E3 today, what timing.

@whitegreyblack: I really liked Spec Ops The Line and I'm looking forward to seeing what else Yager can do. I always saw them taking on Dead Island 2 as a means to make some money to keep themselves going while they develop something else of their own.

I hope this doesn't put a nail in their coffin.

Like a few of the folks here seem to, I really enjoyed Spec Ops so I hope Yager move on to something better and don't get closed down because of this. I just can't understand why someone over at Deep Silver didn't realize that the two games (Dead Island and Dying Light) would be competing with one another. Well, that and why they even started work on a Dead Island 2 to begin with: They never seemed to work right and forcing more multiplayer into a busted game series didn't seem like a good solution.

@maximus_dipplomacy: Not sure if sarcastically poking at Dying Light, or if you are not aware of Dead Island 2.

Looks like Dead Island 2 will be dead on arrival

Well, Deep Silver finally succeeded in running that franchise into the ground. I wonder if their next unexpected hit will get the same treatment with DLC forcibly turned into a retail sequel, garbage spinoffs hurting the brand and mandates on the first real sequel that drove the developers away, which probably involved wringing extra money out of it.

This has to be as dead as Prey 2.

Has anyone said "Yager BOMBED!" yet? I want to be that person.

Analog. Combat.

I liked Dying Light and all but I wasn't really feeling the animation priority/stamina management/Dark Souls-y thing they were going for.

BUT ANALOG COMBAT SAVED DEAD ISLAND FOR ME. GOD DAMN THAT WAS SO COOL NEARLY EVERY TIME.

I SLID DOWN A SLOPE AND USED THE MOMENTUM TO MOW A DUDE COMPLETELY OVER WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER AND IT WAS THE RADDEST THING

I think what a lot of people here are forgetting is that when Jeff saw Dead Island 2, it looked straight-up BAD. I absolutely loved Spec Ops, but I always thought DI2 was a weird game for the team to be working on as a follow up, and the fact that it seemed janky isn't really surprising. Let's hope this doesn't spell the end for YAGER, and that they rebound with something that seems more in their wheelhouse.

@legion_: Im aware of the development of 2, just hope dead island trys something more developed and works right.

I really hope they just scraped the E3 2014 version because that had no saving grace.

Yager is also working on Dreadnaught, which is a large ship space combat game... I'm much more interested in that anyway.

When Techland was developing Dead Island 1 under Deep Silver, they also reported having a lot of issues with Deep Silver and the direction they wanted to take the game. This is why they broke off and developed Dying Light instead of staying on and working on Dead Island 2. Not sure what Deep Silver really wants the game to be, but they're shooting themselves in the foot and regardless, I'm sure it will fail commercially since no one will have faith in the franchise. As long as they maintain co-op play, I'll probably play it eventually.

Personally, I liked Dead Island 1. Would never play it single player. mind you, and Riptide was even more fun since I played as the brawler and he was seriously OP'd. Made for a fun game.

Red flag shoots into outer space when a game changes developers. My confidence in the game just went way down.