Last Updated on September 12, 2025 by Angel Melanson
Dead Island, for a great many gamers out there, remains a gold standard of the zombie genre when it comes to console gaming. Released in 2011, the game largely holds up to this day, in no small part to a remaster that came out several years later. In any event, players finally got the chance to head back to this universe in 2023 when Dead Island 2 hit shelves after suffering years (and years) of delays. It appears as though developer Dambuster Studios isn’t going to make us wait 12 years for another installment.
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Dambuster recently shared a message with fans on the official Dead Island 2 Steam page. While the company didn’t go out of its way promising anything, it very much seems like they are teasing Dead Island 3 as being in development. The message reads as follows:
“It's been 14 years since Dead Island first splattered onto the scene, stranding players in the blood-soaked paradise of Banoi. Since then, the zompocalypse has crawled from tropical shores to the sun-drenched chaos of HELL-A in Dead Island 2, where over 20 million Slayers have left nothing but carnage behind. This isn’t the final cut though. Dambuster Studios are already carving out what comes next.
For now, the details stay under wraps, the outbreak is far from over…”
It would be easy enough to read that “carving out what comes next” bit as just about anything. It could be a new original game. The possibilities are endless. But when they say “the outbreak is far from over,” that’s when it gets harder to read this as anything but a tease for a potential Dead Island 3. Or, at the very least, perhaps another expansion for Dead Island 2. Two story expansions, beginning with Haus in October 2023, have been released to date. The SOLA Festival expansion was also released in April 2024.
As for the 20 million players, aka slayers, claim, that number would certainly constitute a sequel from a commercial standpoint for both Dambuster and publisher Deep Silver. However, official sales figures put the number at over 4 million copies. That said, the player count was likely inflated greatly thanks to the game’s inclusion on Xbox Game Pass in February 2024. Either way, it was clearly quite popular.
Without having more information, it’s difficult to speculate much further. As for when it could happen? Game development takes years these days so even if it were announced tomorrow, we probably wouldn’t see it until late 2026 at the very earliest. More likely 2027 or beyond. Then there’s the matter of the story and setting. The first game took place on an isolated island, whereas the second one largely took place in Los Angeles. It’s a big world out there though, with lots of zombies to kill.
Dead Island 3 remains without a release date but stay tuned. For more, get the low down on Bloober Team's new sci-fi/horror game Cronos: The New Dawn.
