During a recent panel talk at Develop:Brighton, Martin Wein, formerly the head of communications at Deep Silver, dove into the historic delay that stretched Dead Island 2’s development window out to a decade. He admitted that he and the product team working to marshal the game’s development effectively drove the ‘eight-year product delay’ of Dead Island 2.
He revealed that it was either push the game back untold amounts or risk releasing a title that ‘would have killed the franchise.’
‘Deep Silver Did The Right Thing’
Martin Wein was the head of communications at Deep Silver when the publisher was overseeing the development of Dead Island 2. Techland, the studio behind the original Dead Island titles, had transitioned to work on Dying Light, forcing Deep Silver to bring in the first of many studios to work on Dead Island 2.
It was almost a decade before Dead Island 2 ultimately hit the market that the game’s first trailer was released, during a little industry event you might have heard of called ‘E3’.
Back in 2014, Wein revealed that Deep Silver was ‘mightily proud’ of the trailer, but it was the spark that ignited a major downfall, and within weeks, milestones were failing to be hit. The product being pieced together by Yager wasn’t reflective of the first games that had sold so well.
About 3 to 4 weeks later, we had a major milestone with the development studio that was in charge at that time. And boy, that game sucked.
It had nothing to do with what made the original Dead Island really fun. We commissioned a play test and got horrific feedback. And we sat down with the development team and said, ‘Okay, what’s the course of action?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, leave it with us’.
(Thanks to GI.biz for the quote)
The game was slated for a 2015 release, but following several studio switches, the open-world zombie slasher was finally delivered by Dambuster Studios in 2023.
Wein and the team around him made the fateful decision to take the game out of Yager’s hands all those years ago, kickstarting one of the longest development windows in recent history, almost a decade from door to door. He maintains it was the right thing to do:
Sometimes you have to make hard decisions. Because we could have, at that point, put out a shit game. It might have made some money, but it would have killed the franchise.
I think at that point Deep Silver did the right thing, and Dead Island 2 was a commercial success in the end. Because they took that step, and they said that we need to make a game that fits for the player.
Dead Island 2 dropped in 2023 and became one of the standout bestsellers of the year. It was a firm favourite of mine and became the first game I 100%’ed in several years, falling in love with the open world environment, the eclectic mix of characters, and the unique gore engine used to make the game super visceral.
Did you enjoy Dead Island 2? Let me know on the Insider Gaming forum.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that we have more Dying Light docket codes to collect
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
