Dead Island 2 will be an Epic Store exclusive according to court documents

Dead Island 2 and the next Saints Row game will both be Epic store exclusives on PC, according to an Epic Store document from 2019 that was made public during the ongoing Epic vs Apple legal battle.

Epic has been providing all kinds of evidence in its legal jousting match with Apple, and there is plenty of juicy information hiding in there if you go digging. One such piece of information (via PC Gamer), revealed that one piece of evidence, the “Review of Performance and Strategy” document, makes reference to both Dead Island 2 and an upcoming Saints Row game being Epic Store exclusives. This comes from the same document that revealed Epic had spent nearly $1 billion on securing launch exclusives for its PC gaming storefront.

Dead Island 2 was originally announced back in 2014 and has had numerous development setbacks including several studio switches. It was originally being developed by Techland, the team behind the first Dead Island, before development switched to Yager after Techland decided to focus on Dying Light. In 2015, Yager was pulled from the project and later shut down, with Sumo Digital taking the reins on the project. Finally, development jumped studios once again, with Dambuster Studios taking over the project in 2019. 

You’d be forgiven for thinking Dead Island 2 is never coming out, but publisher Deep Silver has recently confirmed that it’s still on the way. If and when Dead Island 2 does finally get released though, it’s going to be an Epic store exclusive on PC. Since the document is from 2019 and is quite vague on details about the Saints Row game in question, it's not clear whether it refers to the upcoming Saints Row 5, or the previously released Saints Row 3: Remastered which did launch as an Epic store exclusive in May 2020.

Check out our upcoming PS5 games and upcoming Xbox Series X games articles and try to guess how many of those games will release before Dead Island 2.