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Wild West Online

Platform(s): PC
Genre: Online Multiplayer
Publisher: 612 Games
Release Date: May 10, 2018

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'Wild West Online' Developer Shut Down, Picked Up By Free Reign Entertainment, Being Split In Two

by Rainier on Oct. 25, 2018 @ 11:39 a.m. PDT

Wild West Online is an open-world action-based, online multiplayer game in which players are free to explore and interact within a thrilling Wild West setting.

In Wild West Online your actions decide if you’ll be a hero, a villain or something else entirely in this R-Rated adult’s playground, where you choose if you want to follow the law of the land or throw the good book out the window. Dig deeper and you might start to suspect there’s more going on here than just lawmakers and lawbreakers – underneath the surface this west is even wilder than meets the eye.

Back in July, 612 Games promised a reboot of the game but then went totally dark. Turns out that the studio ran into financial trouble due to disappointing Early Access sales and was forced to shut down in August 2018.

Early on WWO caught some flack due to the perceived involvement of Sergey Titov, the man behind controversial titles like The War Z (later renamed/repackaged as Infestation Survivor Stories), Romero's Aftermath, Shattered Skies and a few other titles, as well as a variety of perceived shelter/linked companies.

At the time 612 Games claimed it was neither a subsidiary nor financed by Sergey Titov's Free Reign, that its similarities were merely due to the fact that it had licensed the same Nightshade engine as the aforementioned list of games.

Judging by the current events, there may have been more to it than 612 Games led us to believe.

We've been working to bring game back. First of all sorry for not talking to you sooner, but until very recently I personally didn't knew if I have a job or not - effectively by August any new development was stopped, and pretty much company have closed. Game didn't sold enough copies to keep team on payroll, some of us haven't been paid for over 3 months by now, and effectively any support to the game was shut. 

Core of the development team have worked hard to find potential partners, financing, etc for the WWO, but unfortunately it didn't happened. What did happened like few weeks ago was a miracle - basically folks at Free Reign Entertainment stepped up and agreed to help us to develop game further. Formalities took some time, but as of now I'm glad to announce that game have new home and new hope. While most of the original dev team is gone by now - in fact only like 3 person including me are left, we have a new team to help us to move forward. 

So what is going to happen in near future :

  1. If you own WWO - you're okay. your account will be intact, all of your purchases are safe. You will continue to use your login to play game. You also will receive some generous rewards for being loyal player. Both in game TN currency, as well as items such as additional Land Lots. 
  2. You will need to download and install new game client. for now it'll be only available thru our own website and will be available on Steam at later date. From this new client you will have access to two games effectively from one launcher - Frontier and Magnificent 5. 

    Frontier is an wild west themed survival/exploration/PVP game. You will explore world ( yes full game an the North will be available ), build your own housing and settlements, craft items, hunt animals, etc. This is basically evolution of the WWO as you know it. It'll be much more focused on building and crafting than WWO though. 

    Magnificent 5 is our "obligatory" take on Battle Royale :). It's based on work Free Reign Entertainment have made with it's Chinese partners. up to 20 team of 5 players each are fighting in a dynamic world, build fortifications, trying to get best loot and artifacts. Monetization of the game is VERY SIMILAR to Fortnite, with Season Passes that opens challenges and access to cosmetic items. 
  3. Game will become FREE to all players. Anyone and their friends will be able to create free account and play game. To compensate this to our existing players, you will receive at lest $15 worth of TN as well as some additional items that are valuable in a game. 
  4. WHEN ? Magnificent 5 will be available for general public testing in a week or so, with Frontier to become available in November. Both games will be available as "open beta" - but there'll be no account wipes or anything like this.

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