Dead Island 2 finally came out this year to decent reviews after a tumultuous nine-year development cycle that spanned three different studios. A recent report from Game Informer reveals that the game's original developer, Yager, was not fully prepared for the scale of the project, and that Unreal Engine 4 was a key part of why its version of the game was canceled.

The Game Informer report cites "numerous people" who worked at all of the studios involved during Dead Island 2's development, all of whom remain anonymous. It suggests that the unexpected success of the original Dead Island led developer Techland to scramble to come up with the sequel pitch, which was rejected by publisher Deep Silver for straying too far from Dead Island's core identity. (That pitch would eventually become the nut of the Dying Light franchise.)

According to the report, Spec Ops: The Line developer Yager was hired to make Dead Island 2 primarily because the studio offered the lowest bid. The project was set to be a more faithful Dead Island sequel that shared the original's campy tone and took place in a walled-off California.

However, according to multiple sources, the game's publisher told Yager that it wanted the game to have eight-player seamless multiplayer, which was a huge shift in priorities. In addition to that, the report says that the main culprit for the project's failure was Unreal Engine 4, which simply could not support the sort of open-world gameplay that Yager and Deep Silver imagined for the project. It's also worth noting that both the studio and the publisher declined to comment for the piece.

Dead Island 2's nine-year development cycle is one of the longest in recent memory for a game that actually released, joining such luminaries as Duke Nukem Forever (15 years) and Diablo 3 (11 years).