Even with Dead Island there were a lot of moments where we would disagree on the creative vision of the project, so this might have been one of the factors.” “They had a lot of ideas about how they wanted to run the franchise. In an interview with Eurogamer, Maciej Binkowski of Techland said of the decision to work elsewhere:
The original game’s developers, Techland,were meant to take on the sequel, but instead decided to partner with WB Games to work on the far better Dying Light. When it seemed like everyone and their mothers were getting involved with the zombie craze, Dead Island 2 was announced at E3 2014 and would feature a more vibrant Californian setting.
Escape Dead Island was also a thing, but let’s never mention that again. Riptide became a flop, selling far less than the original title and receiving an even more tepid reception. The game was fun enough to maintain a solid fanbase, however, with the original game’s sales success (over 5 million) landing it a semi-sequel, Dead Island: Riptide. Despite having one of the best game trailers ever, which the actual product held almost no similarity to, it faded into relative obscurity shortly after.
Back in 2011, Dead Island, an open-world zombie-killing action-RPG, released to a lukewarm reception from gamers and critics.
