Dead Island 2 Release Date Moved To April

After so long in the wilderness, getting the Dead Island 2 release date earlier this year was music to the ears of zombie slayers everywhere. Now, unfortunately, said release date has been pushed back; Dead Island 2 has been delayed to April 2023.

The original Dead Island 2 release date was first revealed at Gamescom 2022, although it was leaked shortly before that by an Amazon listing. Now, however, developer Dambuster Studios has taken to Twitter to announce another Dead Island 2 delay, with the game now slated to arrive on April 28th.

In a tweet, the devs say that the "irony" of delaying the game again isn't lost on them, but that development is "on the final straight", with just a little more time seemingly needed to polish up Dead Island 2. The devs call the release date delay "just 12 short weeks", although I'm sure that if you've been waiting for Dead Island 2 since its original announcement all those years ago, 12 weeks might seem pretty significant.

If you're hungry for more Dead Island 2 news, you won't have too much longer to wait, thankfully. There's a Dead Island 2 showcase on the way, and it'll air on December 6th on the official Dead Island Twitch and YouTube channels. You'll also be able to catch it via the game's official website.

Dead Island 2 has had a pretty troubled development history since its announcement in 2014. It's undergone two developer changes; originally, Spec Ops: The Line studio Yager was working on the game, but development was shifted to Sumo Digital in 2016, then again to internal Deep Silver outfit Dambuster Studios in 2019.

Perhaps its most iconic element was its original announcement trailer, in which a jogger obliviously runs along a pier while zombies cause chaos in the background. The trailer was notably parodied by Coffee Stain's Goat Simulator 3 announcement trailer, which replaced the zombies with exploding goats in classic Goat Sim style.

Of course, Dead Island 2 IP owner Embracer Group isn't really waiting for the success of this game to turn its fortunes around or anything. A recent earnings report shows that Embracer's sales increased by 190% compared to the same period last year, with strong sales in particular from games like Tiny Tina's Wonderlands and the much-maligned Saints Row. Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed, meanwhile, performed below expectations, which just goes to show that solid critical reception doesn't necessarily translate to good sales (and bad critical reception doesn't always harm them either).