Surprise, Dead Island 2 has quietly landed on Xbox Game Pass

Would you look at that, Dead Island 2 looks to have quietly rocked up on Xbox Game pass without an official announcement as of writing.

To be fair, Microsoft had a lot on its plate yesterday with the four games it’d hinted at being part of its big multi-platform plans during last week’s podcast all being officially revealed in several different ways. Both Pentiment and Grounded showed up in February 21’s Nintendo Direct, while Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves popped up afterwards, with an Xbox Wire post then confirming the quartet. No wonder a surprise Game Pass arrival looks to have flown under the radar.

The game in question is Dead Island 2, which looks to have arrived on the console and cloud versions of Game Pass, but not PC as of right now, as you can see in the screenshot below, which we’ve grabbed. It’s also listed as being “included with Game Pass” – as well as available to buy in traditional fashion – on the browser version of the Microsoft Store.

As of writing, there doesn’t look to have been an official announcement from Xbox regarding the game’s arrival on the service, either via the Xbox Twitter account or Xbox Wire. Originally released in April 2023, the zombie-slaying action-horror romp from Deep Silver and Dambuster Studios earned a pretty positive review from us, with the general verdict being that it’s “every bit the head-stomping blast that it promised to be”.

It wasn’t included in the latest list of titles coming to Game Pass across late February and early March, with the likes of Bluey: The Videogame, which has also arrived today, February 22, Tales of Arise, and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun having headlined that.

A return to Game Pass for Maneater – that game where you play as a shark and can absolutely annihilate swimmers – was another inclusion on that list, so there’s no shortage of fresh action on the service right now.

While you’re here, make sure to check out our coverage of all of the other big announcements from yesterday’s Direct, including Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection and an Epic Mickey remake.