The VFX company behind that Dead Island reveal trailer we all obsessed over in 2011 is shutting down

A man prepares to swing a fire axe at a zombie in the 2011 reveal trailer for Dead Island. — (Image credit: Deep Silver)

Axis Studios, the Scottish animation and VFX company who made the 2011 Dead Island rewinding teaser, is shutting down. Per GamesIndustry, the studio has ceased production on all its current projects, with 162 employees laid off as the company enters administration.

Back in 2011, Axis produced a cinematic E3 premiere teaser that singlehandedly catapulted Dead Island to the forefront of public consciousness. In a slow-motion, rewound sequence, the trailer revealed how a family's White Lotus-ass vacation met an early, grisly end at the hands of an amassing zombie horde. Even without any gameplay footage, the response at the time was huge. (Zombies weren't quite as played out in 2011.)

I didn't end up enjoying Dead Island very much, but I sure as hell bought it and that teaser is to blame. Imitated and parodied countless times since, Axis's Dead Island trailer left a profound fingerprint on the long-running trope of big budget game reveals pairing gruesome violence with moody, contemplative backing music. Coincidentally, Axis eventually worked on Gears of War, too.

Since then, Axis provided animation and VFX for some of the biggest names in games, having worked on trailers and cinematics for Destiny 2, The Elder Scrolls Online, Warframe, Magic the Gathering, Halo, and more—including the music video for K/DA's "More" single. As the studio's archived site shows, Axis also had a healthy share of VFX credits for TV productions, like HBO's Chernobyl and Netflix's Love, Death, and Robots.

"Axis has more recently been impacted by a decline in customer projects, as well as increases in labor costs," said Alistair McAlinden, one of the joint administrators managing Axis's closure for Scottish restructuring firm Interpath Advisory, in a statement to Televisual. "The directors worked tirelessly to explore alternative solutions, but ultimately had to take the difficult decision to seek the appointment of administrators."

Adding to the grim tally of ongoing layoffs and closures plaguing the games industry, Axis's shuttering underlines how that damage extends beyond game development studios and publishers themselves.

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.