Dead Island 2 disappeared after its reveal trailer dropped in 2014, but the open world zombie franchise has finally made a comeback, releasing a pair of exciting trailers at Gamescom Opening Night Live and confirming a February 3, 2023 release date. Dead Island 2 is aiming for release on current- and next-gen consoles as well as Google Stadia and PC, though those on PC will only be able to get it through the Epic Games Store.
It has long been expected that Dead Island 2 would be an Epic Games Store exclusive, but now that the game's marketing efforts have ramped up, fans have confirmation that this is indeed the case. This may be disappointing news to PC gamers who prefer playing on Steam, especially since the Epic Games Store comes with some drawbacks. While the launcher has made strides in recent years to add new features like achievements, there are still areas where it lags behind the competition, particularly when it comes to pre-loading games.
Recently, Dead Island 2 publisher Deep Silver published the Saints Row reboot, and it too was an Epic Games Store exclusive. Unfortunately, Saints Row fans were only able to pre-load the game on PlayStation and Xbox, with technical issues making it impossible for EGS users to do the same. While it's possible Dead Island 2 will avoid a similar fate, the Epic Games Store has had a history of problematic pre-loading, and if Saints Row is any indication, those problems have yet to be ironed out.
Pre-loading is especially helpful in this day and age as video game file sizes continue to balloon out of control. At the time of this writing, we have no idea what the Dead Island 2 file size is going to be, but it's likely going to be quite a large game. After all, Dead Island 2 is an open world game, and those tend to have beefier file sizes. Fans will likely have to wait until we're much closer to Dead Island 2's release date to learn specifics about the game's file size, but regardless, it's safe to say that pre-loading would be helpful to have, so hopefully it goes off without a hitch.
There are still many questions left to answer as it pertains to Dead Island 2. For example, the Dead Island 2 cinematic trailer at Gamescom confirmed one of the game's playable characters out of six, so there's still quite a few characters left to learn about.
Dead Island 2 launches February 3 for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
