We’ve been inundated with MOBA games in the last couple of years, however, like all genres heavy in the competitive multiplayer department, there are only so many actions per minute to go around. The latest causality is Deep Silver’s Dead Island: Epidemic, which despite reaching open beta, will be put down permanently come mid-October.
Dead Island: Epidemic, developed by Stunlock Studios and based on the popular 2×4-swinging RPG from Techland, was giving its marching orders earlier this week. The game’s website has been replaced with a farewell message — one also available on Epidemic‘s Steam page.
Although serviceable as a goodbye announcement, those looking for a definitive answer as to why the title has been shuttered will be left wanting:
Dear players,
Ever since starting with the Closed Alpha, and all the way through the Closed Beta and Open Beta, we’ve received a great amount of useful criticism and encouraging feedback from our players. This has been invaluable for all the teams involved in developing the game.
Over the past weeks and months we’ve been evaluating how to proceed with Dead Island: Epidemic and looking towards the future for the game. We’re sad to announce today that we’ve come to the conclusion to cease further development.
We will be leaving the servers and the forums open until October 15th, during which time we’ll run a very large discount on all characters and boosts to give everyone a chance to spend any remaining currency on characters and items you may have wanted to try before, but never did.
We want to thank everyone for their support, their feedback, and their time playing Dead Island: Epidemic! The game would not have been the same without you.
Signed,
Team Dead Island: Epidemic
With this latest turn of events, the entire Dead Island franchise has a giant question mark above it. Earlier this year, Dead Island 2 was delayed until 2016, then a few months later Yager, the developer working on the sequel, was kicked off the project by publisher Deep Silver.
Dead Island: Epidemic [Official website]
Comments
7 responses to “Deep Silver Buries Dead Island: Epidemic, Its Zombie-Themed MOBA”
People played it? I thought it was just a case of having a bajillion free keys in your steam inventory for fun…
And no way to get rid of them. :/
(Edit: Other than trying to convince someone to play a MOBA.)
And nothing of value was lost
This is the first I’ve ever heard of this game. And probably the last 😛
I hate to be that guy but your article title makes zero sense when you don’t include the apostrophe in “It’s”. I was very confused while trying to decipher it.
Hello troll! Surely even grammar nazis know the difference between “it’s” and “its”. And it’s not that it rhymes with tits!
The ‘its’ is possessive, referring to Deep Silver’s zombie-themed MOBA. The zombie-themed MOBA is the possession, Deep Silver is the owner – ‘it’.
Possessive ‘its’ is always without the apostrophe. You don’t use the apostrophe on its unless you are referring to the contraction of, “it is.”
what are you talking about dude? the article title is fine and your proposition is grammatically incorrect