The long-delayed Dead Island 2 has resurfaced in the form of a leaked unfinished build from 2015, with social media now flooded with videos and screenshots from the game.
Dead Island 2, the sequel to 2011’s Dead Island, was first revealed through a trailer at E3 2014.
The E3 2014 trailer hyped up Dead Island 2, but unfortunately, things did not pan out for the co-op zombie shooter. It was supposed to launch in spring 2015, but years later, the game has still not been released.
Fans of the first Dead Island, however, may now catch a glimpse of what the sequel looked like five years ago. The unfinished but playable build of Dead Island 2, dated June 2015, reportedly appeared on 4Chan, and has been making waves on YouTube and Twitter, Eurogamer reported.
https://twitter.com/JHarrdington/status/1269054444676640769
The build looks fairly complete, though there are some missing assets such as textures for certain surfaces. However, if this version of Dead Island 2 was indeed from June 2015, it would have been where developer Yager was before creative differences with publisher Deep Silver led to their split in July 2015. Eurogamer said that it has verified that the leaked build was the work of Yager.
Deep Silver said in March 2016 that Sumo Digital would continue Dead Island 2‘s development, but in August 2019, the game was transferred in-house to Dambuster Studios.
With such a rocky development history, we are left to wonder whether Dead Island 2 will ever see the light of day. Meanwhile, if it does, it is also unclear if it will resemble the leaked build, or if it will look like an entirely different project.
Digital Trends has reached out to Deep Silver for comments on the leaked Dead Island 2 build, and will update this article when we hear back.
