Now, 612 Games has received additional funding from the game's initial investors which means it will no longer pursue crowdfunding, nor will it enter the game into Steam's Early Access pre-release initiative.
This is said to be down to an "overwhelming response to the games reveal, which included thousands of emails and over 200,000 site visits"something that has also prompted the devs to launch the game with some of the features previously tied to somewhat questionable stretch goals such as the inclusion of playable female characters.
"In addition Wild West Online will now release with its previous stretch goals in place at launch, including female characters, rich role-playing and social activities such as card games, and localization," reads a statement. "After launch 612 Games will release additional content and gameplay features as part of several expansions in order to continue delivering the ultimate Wild West experience on PC."
Stephan Bugaj adds: "The communitys response to Wild West Online is something we never imagined and thanks to it were able to fully develop a robust Western experience for PC. Weve been fortunate enough to have our initial investors step up and provide additional funding to make the game we wanted, without having to raise money via crowdfunding. Westerns are lacking on PC so we cant wait to release the game to the public."
