Dead Island 2 took 9 years to release following its 2014 reveal. While the second mainline game in the series was trapped in development hell, ping-ponged between studios, Dead Island 3 development is seemingly going a lot smoother.
In the financial reports for developer Dambuster Studios, it’s been confirmed that every developer at the studio is now working in some capacity on the third mainline game in the series.
Following a tease in a Steam blog post that “the next outbreak is already brewing”, this is the first official confirmation that Dead Island 3 is in full development.
“Dambuster Studios is a AAAA video game developer based in Nottingham UK which has 194 employees (as of March 2025). 93% are working in development and the remaining staff are studio management and administrative support,” the report reads.
“After release of Dead Island 2: Ultimate Edition in October 2024, the primary focus for Dambuster Studios is now Dead Island 3. All developers are assigned to the project and once the Luna and Mac versions of Dead Island 2 are complete all of Dambuster’s QA team will also be assigned to Dead Island 3.”
In the financial report, Dambuster reveals that the “current predicted release window for the project is Q1/2 2028” which means that it will be several years until the studio’s next zombie survival RPG is ready to play.
While the second game in the series took a very long time to release, Dead Island 2 released to positive reviews and a significant player count. Since launch, the co-op zombie RPG has seen over 20 million players across PC and console, and the game even received a large amount of post-launch DLC as well.
With a strong elemental weapon focus and a fun, over-the-top atmosphere, Dambuster’s zombie RPG is one of the few successful games to release out of such a horrendous development cycle. Seeing as the third game appears to be going through a much smoother process, hopefully, it’ll be another fun adventure for fans of the series.
