Things aren’t looking all that great for ‘Dead Island 2,’ the sequel to the 2011 hit ‘Dead Island.’ First the creators of the franchise, Techland, had to leave the game since they disagreed with Deep Silver, the publisher, over the direction of the game. (Although that decision resulted in Techland making the excellent ‘Dying Light,’ so Techland did the right thing.) Then just a couple months ago its release date was pushed back to 2016. And now, in what is very likely related news, Yager Productions, the development team that’s been working on ‘Dead Island 2’ since around 2012, is no longer developing the game.

Deep Silver apparently decided that Yager wasn’t making the game that they wanted. Timo Ullmann, of Yager Productions said that the split was caused when the “respective visions of the project fell out of alignment.” And so Deep Silver and Yager have parted ways. It’s not all terrible news. Deep Silver has said, “We will continue working towards bringing our vision of ‘Dead Island 2’ to life, and we will share further information at a later stage.” This is good news for ‘Dead Island 2,’ since Deep Silver clearly wants to continue making games in the popular franchise and won’t be cancelling ‘Dead Island 2’ anytime soon. However, as of yet there has been no announcement about what development team will take over production of ‘Dead Island 2’ or what, exactly, Deep Silver wants the game to be. It does make you wonder what it is that Deep Silver wants out of the game, since first Techland and now Yager were both removed from the project due to differences over the direction the game should take.

As a direct result of losing the contract to finish the game, Yager Productions has declared insolvency. Obviously, this isn’t good for the company, but it’s not quite the same thing as bankruptcy and it apparently gives them time to reorganize and ensure that they can pay their employees for the time being.

Were you looking forward to ‘Dead Island 2’? Are you disappointed by this development? Let us know in the comments below.

As far as anyone knows, ‘Dead Island 2’ is still slated for a 2016 release.