Dead Island 2 on Windows 8.1 and probably Windows 7 too (but I have not tested)
Posted: 29 Jun 2026, 06:19
So when I was looking for games to test https://github.com/Roti-Poulet/DirectX12On7 with, I came found Dead Island 2, and went to give it a try. What surprised me was that it has a native DirectX 11 mode, and it kinda just works on 8.1 at least, albeit with one small modification. You will need to hex edit or CFF Explorer edit DeadIsland-Win64-Shipping.exe, and replace SetThreadDescription with SetLastError. After that, make a shortcut of the .exe, and right click the shortcut, and add ` -d3d11` to the end of the target, Apply, OK, and launch the game with the shortcut, and it just works. If using Steam or some other client that supports launch options, you might want to add -d3d11 there instead.
The game runs fairly well, I can do 1440p Medium with a GTX 1080 and I stay above 60 FPS for the most part. However it stutters a lot. I'm not sure if that's a UE5 thing, a DX11 thing, or a Windows pre-10 thing with this game.
The game runs fairly well, I can do 1440p Medium with a GTX 1080 and I stay above 60 FPS for the most part. However it stutters a lot. I'm not sure if that's a UE5 thing, a DX11 thing, or a Windows pre-10 thing with this game.