This special edition contains:

* Dead Island
* The Ripper: in-game crafting recipe to build a weapon that’s a combination of a buzzsaw and a baseball bat.
* A token to redeem the Bloodbath Arena DLC when it is released (not available at launch).

In the US it was an automatic upgrade for preorders through the GameStop
retailer. In Europe the special edition was available freely at retail, and
some releases (Belgium and the Netherlands for instance) had the full game
content without a mention of special edition on the cover, but with the
alternate cover art, next to the regular release of the game.