Deep Silver is an Austrian video game publisher based in Höfen, Austria, and the primary holder of the Dead Island franchise. Under Deep Silver, every game in the series has been published with their name, despite multiple different developers, setbacks and variously mixed reviews.
Overview[]
Deep Silver was founded in 2002 with their first published game Anarchy Online: The Notum Wars. In 2003, Koch Media (now known as Plaion) invested €500,000 into Deep Silver and later in the year transferred all their publishing deals to Deep Silver, making them the sole publisher of video games for them, though not transferring distribution to Deep Silver. Over the following years, several more branches of Deep Silver were opened, including one in Los Angeles and one in Vienna after an acquisition and merger of several companies that Koch Media had acquired.
The big turner for Deep Silver that brought them into public attention was with the release of the original Dead Island in 2011, as well as the acquisition of the video game developer Volition in 2013. Dead Island was their first published release to top the sales chart, and following its success they acquired the rights to the Metro series.
In late 2013, they acquired the video game developer Fishlabs after the latter entered administration, giving them a route into the mobile game market. Fishlabs would later go on to develop the mobile game Dead Island: Survivors in 2018. In 2014, Deep Silver would acquire Dambuster Studios alongside the rights to Homefront, with Dambuster studios developing its sequel Homefront: The Revolution. In 2019, Dambuster would have taken over development of Dead Island 2, with Deep Silver finally publishing it in 2023.