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’.
I got it for free on Epic. I launched it and something wasn’t working right, and tried a few different Proton versions. Then it just would launch because Denuvo thought it was different systems. I thought I’d come back later and try it, once that wore off, but I never did and probably never will, so the game wasn’t even worth trying it for free for me. Lol. Maybe I’ll try it some day, but I doubt it.