Dead Island 2 has not had a smooth ride since it was shown off with this trailer back at E3 2014 with this trailer:

The troubles seemed to start in April 2015 when it was announced that the game would be delayed into 2016 for reasons unknown to the public. Delays like this aren’t too unusual though so no one really panicked too much. At least, until the publisher Deep Silver announced that they were parting ways with Yager Development, the studio that had been working on Dead Island 2. At the time they assured fans that they were still committed to working on the game and after a while, during which Techland expressed some interest in taking up the reins, it emerged that the game had been given over to Sumo Digital to work on earlier this year. So, it seemed that Dead Island 2 was still a live project.

Except now something odd has happened to the game’s listing on Steam, as noticed earlier by NeoGAF. Where once there was a listing there is now nothing, and on SteamDB it is only referred to as “Unknown App 268150”. This has of course fuelled speculation about what has happened and immediately people have assumed the worst – this can only mean that the game has been cancelled outright.

But wait, others have suggested that this is instead Deep Silver and Sumo Digital removing the old page in preparation for a ‘re-reveal’ of the game. After all, the old listing was based on the game that Yager had been making and their split did have “conflicting visions” listed as a reason for the parting so maybe Sumo’s ideas are shaping a new page that will be added onto Steam’s listings soon. SteamDB does also note that UnknownApp could mean that the listing is just no longer viewable by the public, so it could just be down while they re-do it.

Obviously, if there is any development on this story we’ll let you know but it is interesting…

Hopefully if they are doing a re-reveal the next trailer won’t be quite as blatant with the ‘turning’ of the character in the trailer… I still shudder thinking of it.