With Dead Island 2 releasing to the world on April 21st, the last few weeks have been an exciting time at Dambuster Studios. We wanted to recap some of the things that have happened in that period.
Spotted Around Nottingham
Things began to feel very real a couple of weeks ago when members of the team spotted signs for our game at Nottingham Train Station on their morning commute to work. It was awesome to see Dead Island 2 proudly displayed in our home city with a clear acknowledgment of the place it was created!
Dead Island 2 Goes Global
As well as making an appearance around the UK, DI2 managed to make its way across the world. There were two interactive billboards prior to the game’s release: one on Bourke Street in Melbourne, Australia, and another in the iconic Times Square, New York City!
We’ve also cropped up in several other countries. You can see the Dead Island 2 mural on Venice Beach and the Brixton Bad Boy, Jacob, on the side of a bus in Romania below.
Launch Day at Dambuster
On the day of Dead Island 2’s release, we held a celebration at our studio in Nottingham. It was an opportunity for us all to get together and mark the culmination of five years of hard work and a time to look back on how far we have come as a studio.
Our Studio Head, Rob Matthews, gave a presentation about the game’s creation; it covered the very early concept stages of Dead Island 2’s development right through to the finished game players are enjoying now. Rob shared with us some interesting stats, such as Dambuster growing from 108 to 185 full-time staff members, 77 mocap shoots taking place (31 under covid restrictions), 28,607 pastries being consumed, and two coffee machines having to be retired over the course of development.
Those who couldn’t make it into the studio and some of our friends at both Deep Silver and PLAION joined us remotely too. In the studio, there were zombie-themed sweet treats, enough pizza to feed a small army, and a dozen bottles of the official Dead Island 2 whiskey, which we can confidently state tastes great both neat and mixed -- we recommend trying it with some ginger beer and a few blocks of ice!
We were all also given a surprise package, which included lots of Dead Island 2 and Dambuster swag, a copy of the game and a commemorative plaque to thank everybody individually for their contribution to the project.
One Million Copies Sold in Three Days
By the end of Dead Island 2’s opening weekend, over a million Slayers had touched down in HELL-A. We were over the moon to hear that so many players were having a blast with our game, and we would like to thank everyone who has picked it up so far.
We also topped the UK video games sales charts for the opening weekend, and we currently hold a 76 Metascore and 8.1 User Score for Xbox Series X on Metacritic.
Fancy Joining Us?
We’re always on the lookout for talented folks to join us.
If you fancy being a part of our team, take a look at our careers page