The upcoming zombie action role-playing game Dead Island 2 will be an Epic Game Store exclusive, according to documents shown in the Epic and Apple legal battle.
The exclusive deal was revealed in a document obtained by PC Gamer. The document, titled ‘Review of Performance and Strategy’ from October 2019, was made public during the trial and revealed exclusive deals regarding Dead Island 2 and Saints Row.
Epic and Apple’s ongoing legal battle arose because of Apple’s 30% fee on App Store transactions. Epic Games, which had popular titles like Fortnite on the app store, took exception to the fee and removed games from its storefront.
Epic alleges that Apple has a monopoly, while Apple’s counterargument is that there are numerous other platforms available for publishers, developers and users to choose from.
Dead Island 2 was originally announced in 2014 by Deep Silver. Since then, it has revealed very little about the game – although the game changed developers in 2016, moving from Yager Development to Sumo Digital.
THQ Nordic, which owns Deep Silver, then announced in 2019 that the game had changed development teams again. The publisher moved Dead Island 2’s development to its internal Dambuster Studios team. A video showing an early build of the game from 2015 surfaced online last year.
The document also references an exclusive Saints Row title. Deep Silver and Violation have confirmed Saints Row V is in development, but the document does not list a specific title in the series.
It could be that the document referred to Saints Row: The Third Remastered, which launched exclusively on Epic Game Store last year.
During the legal proceedings, documents were also shown that detailed Sony’s dislike of cross-play and how it charged developers who decided to use the feature.
The legal battle has also revealed how profitable Fortnite was for Epic in its first year of release, making over £3.6billion ($5billion USD).
Elsewhere, Activision has officially announced Sledgehammer Games as the developer of this year’s premium Call Of Duty title.
Activision Blizzard president and COO Daniel Alegre revealed Sledgehammer’s role during the company’s earnings call for the first quarter of 2021. Alegre said: “the game is looking great and on track for its fall release.”
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