ItвЂ™s unclear whether or not they have started work on the game afresh and scrapped everything Yager worked on, but considering the animosity between Deep Silver and Yager by the end, itвЂ™s a safe bet to assume that they have to go back to the drawing board. Nothing more was heard from the game until 2015 when it was announced that Sumo Digital, nomad developers known for titles like Crackdown 3 and LittleBigPlanet 3, would be taking over development for Dead Island 2. However, Yager and Deep SilverвЂ™s respective visions of the project fell out of alignment, which led to the decision that has been made.вЂќ Source: Games Radar The team worked with enthusiasm to take Dead Island 2 to a new level of quality. вЂњOur team is made of the best creative minds and tech specialists, who all share a common identity. The breakdown caused the loss of many jobs at Yager with its managing director Timo Ullmann saying at the time: In July 2015, it was revealed why.Д¬iting irreconcilable creative differences, Yager parted ways with Deep Silver, leading to the game falling into a hiatus. The seriesвЂ™ official social media channels became very tight-lipped, divulging nothing about the game for almost a year and there were no new PR materials released whatsoever. Nothing more was heard from it and when I say nothing, I mean absolutely nothing. Dead Island 2 was set to be their biggest project yet, and with the cult adoration of Spec Ops, it looked as if the game was in safe hands.ДЇollowing a gameplay trailer reveal at Gamescom 2014, Dead Island 2 went dark. The project was then awarded to Yager Development, most famous for the surprisingly excellent Spec Ops: The Line, as well as Dreadnought in recent times. Even with Dead Island there were a lot of moments where we would disagree on the creative vision of the project, so this might have been one of the factors.вЂќ вЂњThey had a lot of ideas about how they wanted to run the franchise. In an interview with Eurogamer, Maciej Binkowski of Techland said of the decision to work elsewhere: The original gameвЂ™s developers, Techland,were meant to take on the sequel, but instead decided to partner with WB Games to work on the far better Dying Light. When it seemed like everyone and their mothers were getting involved with the zombie craze, Dead Island 2 was announced at E3 2014 and would feature a more vibrant Californian setting. Escape Dead Island was also a thing, but letвЂ™s never mention that again.

Riptide became a flop, selling far less than the original title and receiving an even more tepid reception. The game was fun enough to maintain a solid fanbase, however, with the original gameвЂ™s sales success (over 5 million) landing it a semi-sequel, Dead Island: Riptide.

Despite having one of the best game trailers ever, which the actual product held almost no similarity to, it faded into relative obscurity shortly after.

Yager was then forced to shut down a new branch of its studio that had been created for the express purpose of developing Dead Island 2.ДЄfter Deep Silver handed the reigns to Sumo Digital, the publisher mostly kept quiet about things, though it did tweet in July 2016 that it would show Deep Silver вЂњwhen itвЂ™s ready to showвЂќ and that it would release вЂњmore information on Dead Island 2 at a later stageвЂќ but was вЂњstill working on it.вЂќ Apparently, that status has changed little in the 10 months since.Back in 2011, Dead Island, an open-world zombie-killing action-RPG, released to a lukewarm reception from gamers and critics. Spec Ops: The Line developer Yager was originally developing the game, but Deep Silver pulled the project from Yager in 2015, citing creative differences. The sequel was announced during E3 2014 with a planned spring 2015 release date that Deep Silver was ultimately unable to meet. After the original 2013 game crossed over five million in sales, it became one of Deep SilverвЂ™s biggest properties.

Of course, Dead Island 2вЂ™s development has been anything but smooth.

Was dead island 2 cancelled