[Update #2]: Nearly a decade after its original announcement, Dead Island 2 has now finally been unleashed.
[Update]: Dead Island 2 is not only alive, but it's also finally launching on February 3rd, 2023 for PC and consoles!
Dead Island 2 has not had the best of luck. Ever since it was announced there were rumors of troubled development, and then in 2015 there was a "significant delay" which resulted in Deep Silver cutting ties with Yager Development (the folks behind Spec Ops: The Line). A glimmer of hope appeared soon after as rumors started circulating that Techland (the folks behind the original Dead Island) wanted another crack at it, but that unfortunately didn't turn out to be true. Finally, Deep Silver entrusted the project to Sumo Digital (whom you might know from Little Big Planet 3) earlier this year, but ever since then we have heard almost nothing of Dead Island 2.
If you thought that story was too complex and overly convoluted you're in for another treat as DeathSparks over on Neogaf noticed that the Dead Island 2 entry in the Steam Database had been completely removed, a notion that very rarely leads to good news.
The first and most negative reasoning behind this decision is that Dead Island 2 has been canceled, but the official announcement isn't being made just yet in order to not sully the publisher's E3 presentation. While there is quite obvious merit to this theory its also worth noting that the Dead Island 2 Steam Database entry hadn't been updated for almost half a year now, indicating that the development was done on some in-house prototype, rather than the one shown here.
My personal favorite theory is that the database entry had been removed in order to either announce a re-branding, or to re-reveal "Dead Island 2" with a completely different vision behind it, perhaps one that is less about smacking zombies with electrified sticks and more about being slightly realistic while still smacking zombies over the head with sticks.
Whatever the case may be I doubt any answers will be coming until next month's E3, so until then I leave you with Dead Island 2's original reveal trailer: