State of Decay 3 Was Revealed Before Development Even Started

State of Decay 3 was not even in development when its first trailer came out, according to Undead Labs’ studio head. It’s been eight years since the last game in the zombie survival game was released, and six since the third was announced, and now fans have some insight into why the wait has been so long. It turns out State of Decay 3 has not been actively in the works for as long as it seemed.

After a long wait since its initial reveal, State of Decay 3 will finally be playable soon, with a closed alpha coming in May 2026. It’s still unclear exactly when the game will be out in full, though it likely won’t be in 2026 as some had thought it might before. While fans may be hungry for a release date, it’s encouraging to see things move along after such an extended period of relative silence, and as more information keeps trickling out, it’s easier to see why things have been so slow.

State of Decay 3 Lead Says “There Really Wasn’t a Game” When Reveal Trailer Came Out

Head of Undead Labs Philip Holt recently sat down with Sunny Games to discuss State of Decay 3 and revealed that by the time the first trailer debuted, “the game was in a Word document.” Fans got their first look at State of Decay 3 in a 2020 teaser at that year’s Xbox Games Showcase. At the time, the game was assumed to be one of the first Xbox Series X titles, given the timing of its announcement, but according to Holt, proper work on the title had not even begun at that point. There were only “four or five people” on the team, so the pre-rendered trailer was more like a showcase of early concepts than a reflection of any real gameplay.

The topic came up as Holt explained that there would be no zombie deer in the game, despite that being one of fans’ biggest takeaways from the original trailer. As more teasers came out, State of Decay 3’s zombie animals were nowhere to be seen, and now Holt has confirmed that the idea has been scrapped. Once Undead Labs began development in earnest and got deeper into actually testing and executing its ideas, some things that appeared in the trailer had to change. Holt reassures fans that some of the elements in that early preview will make their way into the final build, but zombie animals won’t be one of them.

This new information also makes it more understandable why there has been such a long gap between the announcement and any further updates. There were four years between the first State of Decay 3 trailer and the second, but this was because there was nothing to show until after the initial reveal had already come out. Much of Undead Labs was still focused on updating State of Decay 2 at the time, so real progress on the third likely didn’t start until well after the first teaser debuted, as more devs could come on board to begin actual programming, designing, and writing.

It may seem strange to release a trailer for a game before actually working on it, but that’s not uncommon in the industry today. Many games like GTA 6 and Cyberpunk 2077 are announced before work begins in earnest because they need to get investors’ attention to fund development. Undead Labs and State of Decay 3 may not have quite the same scale as these major titles and studios, but it still needs to generate buzz. Now that Undead Labs is part of the Microsoft umbrella, there may be extra pressure to build something much bigger than the last game, requiring additional resources. Whatever the case may be, the long wait is understandable, and it thankfully could be coming to a close.