GavinUK86
Member
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/07/11/wtf-is-going-on-with-wild-west-online
Uh oh. This doesn't sound too good.
Wild West Online first appeared on Kotaku UK's radar a couple of months ago, when we received dozens of emails pointing towards a GTA forum where an apparently ‘leaked' screenshot of Red Dead Redemption 2 had been posted. Being suspicious sorts, we stayed away, and it turned out this was an unconventional reveal strategy — after all, an unattributed screenshot of Wild West Online on a Rockstar-focused board was obviously going to create Red Dead Confusion. After this flurry of attention, the publisher stepped in to reveal all.
Depending on your perspective, this is clever or cynical marketing. Subsequent to this, however, as details of WWO emerged it was linked to controversial developer Sergey Titov — a connection which the publisher has denied. Titov is behind various companies that have produced several poor-quality games, the most infamous of which are the zombie sim War Z and Big Rigs. The publisher's denial is a denial and yet, even now, unexplained coincidences around WWO raise questions.
Wild West Online is, as the name suggests, a cowboy-themed massively multiplayer open world action game. It looked decent enough in its initial screens and in the first gameplay walkthrough, released by developer 612 Games yesterday.
Even so, something about the early screenshots immediately raised the suspicions of Redditor TheSkiesAreShattered, who suggested that Wild West Online was using the engine built by Sergey Titov's company Free Reign Entertainment. Free Reign more recently developed and released the game Shattered Skies, which has less-than-stellar Steam ratings mainly complain about it being abandoned by the developers.
Although TheSkiesAreShattered's initial post has since been removed, it was enough to stoke the curiosity of other internet sleuths. YouTuber BigfryTV, for instance, posted a video highlighting further connections, albeit circumstantial, between Wild West Online and Free Reign Entertainment.
Uh oh. This doesn't sound too good.