Has Unturned 2 Been Cancelled?

Zombie survival game Unturned has been growing a fairly healthy player base since its early beginnings back in 2014 on PC. Since then, the free-to-play title received a console release in 2020, and its average player count regularly surpasses 50,000 players. But given that the title has been around for so long, it's left many wondering what happened to its planned sequel, Unturned 2. 

Unturned 2 was initially in-development from developer Smartly Dressed Games, with development updates and goals posted to the developer's blog. But, as of 2024, there's no sign of Unturned 2. So, has it been cancelled?

Is Unturned 2 Still Coming Out? 

In a blog post from May 11, 2022, designer Nelson Sexton announced that the development for Unturned 2 has been paused. The reasons were largely personal, with Sexton stating that they would be taking more care of their own mental health in order to put their energy into supporting Unturned.

"I think that in order to streamline the “work” side of life for increased “personal” side I need to cut everything back to only developing Unturned (3.0)," Sexton said. "I imagine this sounds alarming like “uh oh Unturned dead game!” To the contrary, I hope to bring many of the Unturned II (4.0) goals back to the original project."

So, for now, Unturned 2 is not formally cancelled. Rather, it has been indefinitely paused. However, it seems features planned for Unturned 2 have been instead worked back into the original Unturned.

Unturned 2 Release Date Speculation

At the time of writing, Unturned 2 does not have a release date. As for when we can xpect to learn of a release date, Sexton said in the May 11 blog post that: "When/if I resume development, I do not intend to post about it until/unless I have a concrete plan and release date that I can 100% guarantee commitment to."

"I hope that I can somewhat make it up to you in the meantime by doing my best to help Unturned (3.0) live up to its full potential."

The last blog post from Sexton on the Smartly Dressed Games blog was on June 11, 2023, titled "One year later."