As if it weren’t already clear that the world is not desperately short of F2P MOBAs, and that dressing a game in the clothes of a known brand isn’t attractive enough to players, another branded arena ‘em up is closing.

Dead Island: Epidemic [official site], a MOBA-y spin-off from the open-world zombie-slaying FPS-RPG, will close next month, publishers Deep Silver have announced. The game will never have left open beta testing.

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If you’ve missed word of Dead Island: Epidemic before today, it is – deep breath – a free-to-play multiplayer action hack and slash arena game. It’s pursuing a cartoony look and feel and, from a trailer voiceover, it’s making no bones about trying to be funny (although I hope the game itself aims a little higher than a silly voice).

There’s a little more info on this kinda-sorta-maybe-MOBA in a post we ran all the way back in June, although details will have changed since then. Epidemic has just reached open beta and there’s a new trailer to celebrate.

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I had not particularly noted Dead Island: Epidemic‘s passage into Early Access. I’d seen enough games chasing the dream of League of Legends and Dota 2‘s success with only a few small new idea. And it had the temerity to coin its own cutesy genre name, Zombie Online Multiplayer Battle Arena! However, after watching a new gameplay trailer explain what it’s up to, I’m at the very least interested. Not enough to pay for the beta of a game that’ll be free-to-play at launch, mind.

While the majority of MOBAs (do I still need to explain this dreadful name?) seem to mostly duplicate LoL or Dota, Dead Island: Epidemic takes their ideas of per-match progression and slap them into something a bit more like Diablo III with a sizeable PvE side.

… [visit site to read more]

Same-y MOBAs that can’t quite manage the raw mechanical majesty of League of Legends and Dota 2 are an epidemic. So how do we cure that pestilence of painful mediocrity? Well, Techland and Stunlock Studios are suggesting we fight an epidemic with an epidemic – a Dead Island: Epidemic, to be precise. It ups the ante with another of the gaming industry’s more rampant diseases (zombies) but also puts some fresh meat on the genre’s bones with a three-team dynamic and more open maps. Also ramshackle weapons galore, because that is – in the parlance of our time – how Dead Island do>.

… [visit site to read more]