Eight years ago, an open-world zombie game known as Dead Island 2 was announced at E3 2014, initially being developed by Techland. It showed off a cinematic trailer giving an idea of what players should expect, where California has been placed under quarantine due to a zombie outbreak. After that, however, the game had been put through development hell, as Techland would then go on to work on the similar open-world zombie game Dying Light. This forced Dead Island 2 to find a new developer, which was also a turbulent cycle.