You can pick up Dead Island: Riptide free to celebrate Dead Island 2's inevitable hop to Steam

A zombie screaming on the beach at sunset

(Image credit: Deep Silver)

Here's my toxic trait: I get annoyed when games aren't on Steam. Not for any principled reason, not because I love my Steam Deck (though I do), and not even because Steam—per our own ranking of the PC's many launchers—is the best client of the bunch. I just don't like my collection being scattered all over various clients. It feels like having all your games on one shelf in your living room but being compelled, by some mysterious force, to occasionally go and put some of them on a different shelf upstairs. It's not right, it's unnatural, and I shan't have it.

Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, right, I mention this because Dead Island 2—last year's underwhelming zombie-basher that's been hitherto Epic-only—is making the inevitable jump to Steam on April 22. You guessed it: that's one year and one day after it came out on the Epic Games Store. If you close your eyes, you can visualise with almost crystal clarity the terms on the contract Deep Silver signed with Epic.

To celebrate the jump, you can pick up Dead Island: Riptide Definitive Edition for free over on Steam until Thursday, February 15, and Dead Island Retro Revenge is 75% off until the 20th. So even if you're not gonna pick up the second game, you might as well grab the free—and generally positively received—Riptide for free.

I'm always glad to see more games come to more platforms, but you might wanna wait for a Steam sale before you pick Dead Island 2 up. Lewis Parker gave the game 55% in our Dead Island 2 review, writing that "Apart from the admittedly impressive technical performance, it's hard to find much reason to recommend Dead Island 2," and that "Although the combat feels responsive and intuitive, it sadly does little to compensate for the game's numerous shortfalls – especially when said gameplay barely evolves throughout the game's twenty hour campaign."

Perhaps Dead Island 3 will nail it? Given that 2 took a decade to make, though, I guess we might be waiting a while.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.