Ark: Survival Ascended: Developer reacts after shitstorm because of remaster price

Studio Wildcard recently postponed the sequel Ark 2 to 2024 and announced a remaster of the first part of the survival series under the name Ark: Survival Ascended for this year. But this costs a whole lot of money and shouldn’t even include the additional content – and that caused a huge shitstor. Now the developers are reacting.

Studio Wildcard certainly imagined this very differently! A comprehensive remaster of Ark: Survival Evolved was recently announced, which is to be released in August 2023 as Ark: Survival Ascended based on Unreal Engine 5 and will thus be noticeably technically advanced. Still, fans of the survival classic were less than thrilled – and the pricing is to blame for that.

On the Xbox, the remaster is only available at full price together with the Sequel Ark 2, which has been postponed to the end of 2024, on the PlayStation a whopping 40 dollars is also due. As if that weren’t enough, the price doesn’t even include the DLC packages for the survival title – and that’s why the fans have gone on the barricades. Now the makers are reacting to the shitstorm.

On the Xbox, the Ark Respawned Bundle is now being scrapped, which means you won’t be forced to buy the remaster and the second part at full price. Even if you wanted to offer two products for the price of one in this way, it was ultimately “not the best move”, as Studio Wildcard now admits. Especially since Ark 2 will be a long time coming, a bundle with the sequel was “not optimal”.

Consequences are also drawn from the criticism of the handling of the DLC packages for the original game, which should have been purchased separately. Here, too, the procedure is changed and all expansions are included directly in the purchase of Ark: Survival Ascended. However, the selling price of the full version will also be increased by 10 dollars.

Buyers then get the following DLCs at hand:

• The Island (zum Launch)
• Survival of the Fittest: The Island & Scorched Earth Kartenvarianten (zum Launch)
• Scorched Earth (Released at Launch)
• Aberration (bis Q4 2023)
• Extinction (bis Q1 2024)
• Genesis Part 1 (bis Q1 2024)
• Genesis Part 2 (bis Q2 2024)
• all maps from the community that will be released over time in 2024 (Fjordur, Ragnarok, The Center, Lost Island, Valguero, Crystal Isles)

Another source of criticism from the community was the fact that certain servers from the original game, Ark: Survival Evolved, are scheduled to be taken offline later this year. This move was defended on the grounds that they would basically be based on old technology that would require significant development resources. Also, some problems are not so easy to solve without a general upgrade. However, the necessary resources should be better used for the new technology and to improve the general gaming experience.