Sumo Digital is the new developer of Deep Silver’s Dead Island 2, following previous developer Yager’s dramatic fallout with the publisher.“Sumo showed so much understanding of the brand, had creative ideas and an excellent, vision that was aligned with our own,” Koch Media boss Dr Klemens Kundratitz told MCV. Koch Media owns Deep Silver.“It just made perfect sense for us to move the project to them,” he continued. “We will reveal more details at a later stage, but for now I’d like to say that we are obviously super excited about the progress that we are making with them.”Following the success of Techland’s original Dead Island game, Deep Silver was understandably keen to publish a full sequel. However, Techland moved on to work on Dying Light so Spec Ops: The Line creator Yager was put in charge of the sequel.However, last year it emerged that Yager had fallen out with Deep Silver over the creative direction of the sequel. As a result, Deep Silver pulled the plug and Yager filed for insolvency. The result of all this mess was that a new developer for Dead Island 2 was needed. Sumo Digital stepped up.“It’s an honour to be charged with the evolution of such an important franchise in Deep Silver’s catalogue,” said Sumo COO Paul Porter. “We’re looking forward to exceeding fan expectation with an ambitious design that we’re confident will take bone-crunching, visceral, zombie action to a whole new level.”Sumo Digital has previously handled sequels, spin-offs and support work on a number of AAA franchises, including LittleBigPlanet, Disney Infinity and Forza. The UK-based studio is currently also helping with the development of the new Crackdown game.
Lets just hope they can do a good job with the game. I thought the original Dead Island was a fun game.
