In what is absolutely one of the wildest “development hell to success” tales of all time, Deep Silver has announced that its turbulent release Dead Island 2 has already sold one million copies on PC and console platforms, less than a week on from its initial release.
The sun-soaked zombie slayer, which finally hit the market after a chaotic, 10-year development cycle, also debuted at number one in the UK Charts, surpassing new releases Minecraft Legends and Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp and usurping last week’s number one, EA’s perennial top-slotter FIFA 23. Deep Silver notes that players/slayers have already killed over a billion zombies since launch, while biting the sand themselves somewhere in the region of 28 million times. Nobody said it was gonna be easy.
HELL-A welcomed over a million Slayers during its launch weekend.That's mind-blowing. Thank you! #DeadIsland #SeeYouInHELLA pic.twitter.com/zcowIPTM3C
— Dead Island (@deadislandgame) April 24, 2023
Dead Island 2, first announced way back at E3 2014, has passed through several developers, went through a number of rewrites and redesigns, and was a frequent running gag throughout the gaming community — A title that never seemed to ever reach fruition, yet simply refused to go away. As I wrote in our review, the final result isn’t exactly a Game of the Year contender, but sports a healthy sense of humor, deeply satisfying combat, and smart and attractive visuals, resulting in a title that will definitely go down as having one of the most surprising “happy endings” in game development history.
Dead Island 2 is available now on PlayStation, PC, and Xbox platforms.
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