Dead Island 2 sells over one million copies in its first weekend

Dambuster Studios’ zombie-slaying role-playing game, Dead Island 2, has been a commercial success, with over one million sales so far following its release on April 21.

The details:

• After a lengthy development process that included multiple studios and an entirely canned version of the game, Dead Island 2 has finally been released. Dambuster and publisher Deep Silver revealed in a new press release that the game sold over a million units in 72 hours despite not even being available on Steam. The press release also included some fun statistics, with players racking up 11 million hours of playtime, 1.1 billion zombies being slain, 756 million zombie limbs being severed, and 45 million zombies being sliced in half.
• So far, the game has received user scores between 6.2 and 8.0 on Metacritic, with many praising the lighthearted gameplay, including its limb destruction system, as well as its visuals, with the game set in sunny California. Another reason the game is already proving to be more popular than previous Dead Island titles is that it has far fewer bugs, with Techland's original game and its sequel Riptide being notoriously broken with their generally janky mechanics and a hilariously long page dedicated to glitches on their fan-run wiki.
• Techland intended to develop the game before disagreements with Deep Silver drove it to pull out of the project in favor of working on Dying Light with Warner Bros. Interactive. Deep Silver then hired Yager Development to create the game, which was set to be released in 2015 and had gameplay shown to the press before being dropped from the project. It was then transferred to Sumo Digital, where the same thing occurred, resulting in it eventually falling into the hands of Dambuster Studios.
• In 2020, an early build of Yager's original version of the game was leaked online. While unfinished, the build provides some insight into what the original game was aiming for, with a “cartoony” art direction and a similar playful tone to the final product.

More sales news:

• Mundfish’s first-person shooter Atomic Heart has surpassed its expected sales figures, according to its publisher, Focus Entertainment. The game celebrated five million players in March, and although the specific sales numbers are unknown, a considerable number of players likely played the game via Xbox Game Pass.
• Management is allegedly "upset" at the current state of Xbox, with Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush reportedly underperforming in sales despite critical acclaim. It’s believed that the game’s shadow launch on Game Pass may have cannibalized its sales.