We live in a cruel world.

Update 2: Bloomberg's Jason Schreier chimes in with his own report. Schreier claims that the Dead Space franchise is "on ice once again." He says that EA Motive had "explored ideas for a new entry in early 2023, but none of those ideas were greenlit."

Of those "new entry" ideas, the biggest hope was for an entirely new game, not a remake of Dead Space 2. This seems to suggest that Grubb heard word of a "new entry" for Dead Space and assumed it was for a Dead Space 2 remake.

Previous Update: EA has now issued a statement that outright says Grubb's statements are untrue. EA told IGN that Dead Space 2 was never in development to begin with.

Furthermore, it seems as though the sequel was never even considered for development at EA or Motive Studio in the first place. Sources speaking to IGN say that the "Dead Space remake was ultimately considered to have done well." This is also a direct contrast to the earlier statements issued by Grubb in which he claims the game sold poorly.

In response to EA's remarks, Grubb doubled down on his earlier statements.


Original story continues below:

In 2023, EA Motive released the Dead Space remake. The remake released with some technical issues across all platforms. Some of those issues, especially traversal stutter, still remain to at least some degree to this day. Outside of those stutters, I found that the remake was absolutely a blast to play and ended up being one of my personal favorite games of 2023.

Since that Dead Space remake came out, there have been some hints that a Dead Space 2 remake was in the works at Motive Studio. Nothing was ever announced nor confirmed, but there were a lot of signs pointing to a Dead Space 2 remake. The original Dead Space 2 is loved by many and is often considered to be a better game when compared to the original. To say fans were excited about a remake of Dead Space 2 would be a bit of an understatement.

Well put those hopes to bed, because that dream is apparently dead!

According to Jeff Grubb, Motive was working on a Dead Space 2 remake. The game was reportedly in a concept phase but has since been outright cancelled or, at the very least, shelved indefinitely. The reported reason for this cancellation is due to "lackluster sales" of the first remake.

Grubb shared information he was given from his insider sources on the latest episode of Giant Bomb's Game Mess Mornings. The relevant clip in question can be found in the tweet below. In the clip, Grubb says that Motive was working on Dead Space 2 but it is now on the shelf because the first remake had lackluster sales.


It's unclear just how many copies of the Dead Space remake were sold across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. We do know that in its launch month of January 2023, the Dead Space remake was the best selling new game in the United States. In fact, it was the second best selling game in January 2023 across new and old games combined, with only Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 surpassing it.

On Steam, estimates on sales range anywhere from 582,000 (SteamSpy) to 1.14 million (VG Insights) copies sold. These figures are only for the Steam version and does not take into account copies sold through the EA App, nor does it take into account PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S sales.

If we estimate a conservative 2 million copies sold across all platforms, it seems EA still deems the Dead Space remake a commercial failure. With today's report, it is very possible that we may never get the Dead Space 2 remake. Currently, Motive is working on an Iron Man game and is now a Battlefield support studio for EA.