August 18, 2022

When is State of Decay 3 coming out? According to a rather damning recent report from Kotaku, it seems unlikely that it will be anytime soon. In fact, the next entry in the survival horror series could have hit a major snag and be stuck in pre-production hell with little in the way of positive news to share on the state of the game. To make sense of what’s going on with Undead Lab’s next entry in the zombie-infested sequel, read on, and we’ll explain everything you need to know about State of Decay 3.

18 Aug Update - Checked for the latest State of Decay 3 news. All the most recent updates are found just below.

Latest News

Release Date

Microsoft announced State of Decay 3 in 2020, but as of May 2022, the project still lacks a release date and in truth, there’s little evidence to suggest when the game could actually arrive.

Following Xbox and Bethesda’s E3 event in 2021, many fans were left disappointed not to see more of several titles announced the year prior. Speaking at the time, VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb suggested that several titles – such as Avowed, Fable, Perfect Dark and Everwild –  were “more than a year away from release”. Conspicuously though, no mention was made of State of Decay 3. Make of that what you will.

At this point, it seems difficult to offer any semblance of a release date, not least when you factor in the issues the game has experienced, which you can read about, just below the official announcement trailer.

State of Decay 3 Delays

It’s possible that ongoing trouble at the studio has led to development delays for the game. A new report released earlier this year by Kotaku has shed light on allegations of sexism and mismanagement at the studio, but also paints a picture of the game being woefully behind schedule, and shown far too early to the public.

We’d recommend everyone read the full report, but here are a few choice lines which stick out:

“It’s working on the ambitious sequel State of Decay 3, but after several years is still trapped in pre-production. And recently it’s faced allegations of mismanagement, burnout, and misogyny as it’s struggled to live up to its promise of being the welcoming, diverse, and inclusive Xbox first-party studio it touts itself as.”

“Undead Labs hadn’t planned to announce State of Decay 3 in 2020, let alone show it, but Microsoft requested trailers from many of its studios in the lead up to the Xbox Series X/S launch, three sources familiar with the decision said.”

“We didn’t want to announce the game because we didn’t even know what it was at that point,” said one current developer. A zombie deer in the announcement teaser became a focal point for fans. Would the new game include undead fauna? It caught some developers by surprise as well, who didn’t recall ever settling on whether that would be a feature or not.”

Clearly, the game is having issues and we imagine that they haven’t improved all that much since the report in March 2022.