According to inExile project leader Chris Keenan in a Kickstarter update, ”As you may know, we had a deal in place with EA to give all our Wasteland 2 backers (including late backers) a copy of Wasteland 1, which was to be integrated and launched from the game’s menu like the original Bard’s Tale trilogy into the new Bard’s Tale. We very happy about that, as we’ve always wanted to enable people to get back to the original, and it serves as a good refresher for the sequel.
We recently went to talk with EA to try and get it out in a different, separate format, and they accommodated our idea. We’ve now inked a new deal where we’ll be able to release Wasteland 1 separately. After getting the game in our hands and ensuring it runs on modern machines, we plan to distribute it FOR FREE to all our backers before Wasteland 2’s release, as well as sell it on GOG.com and Steam for anyone else interested in trying out this classic RPG.”
Wasteland 2 raised $2.9M in Kickstarter crowdfunding (which doesn’t include external funding), and will be released this year.