When can you play Dead Island 2?

If you're wondering when you can play Dead Island 2, then the extremely long wait is almost over and by using New Zealand time you might be able to speed things up further! The game is due to launch at midnight on Friday April 21, after which you can finally get stuck into Dead Island 2 and slay your way across Hell-A. Naturally you'll want to get started as soon as possible, and you may have heard about a trick involving the New Zealand time zone to take advantage of their earlier midnight release, but how do you actually do that? For those looking for a way to play Dead Island 2 early, we've got an explanation of the process.

Can you play Dead Island 2 early using the New Zealand time zone?

Dead Island 2 screenshot — (Image credit: Deep Silver)

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Your success rate for playing Dead Island 2 early using the New Zealand time zone trick will depend entirely on which platform you've purchased the game for, as each system has a different approach to regional settings. For PC players, you can only change the country on your Epic Games account once every six months, and even if you do switch to New Zealand there are other checks in place to prevent you from getting early access. For PS5 and PS4 players, your PlayStation Network account is tied to a specific region, so unless you set up a separate New Zealand-based PSN account and purchase the game through that using local currency, changing your console's region will not affect the time you can start playing as the purchasing account region takes priority.

Xbox Series X and Xbox One players are the only ones who can play Dead Island 2 early by changing the region settings on their consoles, due to Xbox games not being region-locked. To do this, follow these steps:

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Open your Xbox console Settings menu
Go to the System menu
Select Language and Location
Change both Language and Location to English New Zealand

This will switch your Xbox console to New Zealand Standard Time, and you should then be able to start playing Dead Island 2 from 05:00 PDT / 08:00 EDT / 13:00 BST on Thursday April 20. Don't forget to switch your console back to your regular time zone once you've passed the official release date in your region, to get everything correctly back on track again.