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After some fan backlash over how the Ark: Survival Evolved remaster is being handled, Studio Wildcard has responded by… making it more expensive.
Last week, Studio Wildcard made a couple of big announcements related to the Ark series. The first one, that Ark 2 has been delayed into 2024, is completely unsurprising, as we have seen literally nothing of the game so far. The second one was a little more surprising though, as the studio announced that Ark: Survival Evolved is getting a big remaster called Ark: Survival Ascended, as well as the fact that Survival Evolved’s servers are getting shut down, meaning players would have to buy the remaster. Fans didn’t like this much, so obviously Studio Wildcard’s solution was to make it more expensive.
To further explain, in the announcement Wildcard revealed that if you want to play the game on Xbox or PC, you had to buy a bundle which also contains the upcoming second game for $49.99 (on PS5 you could buy just Survival Ascended for $39.99). On top of that players would have to buy upcoming expansion packs. Now, in a new post from Wildcard, apparently none of this is the case.
Survival Ascended will now cost $59.99, will not include Ark 2, and will include all of the upcoming expansions. “We recognize how combining ARK Survival Ascended with ARK 2 and requiring further DLC upgrades wasn’t optimal, especially since you wouldn’t be able to judge ARK 2 as no gameplay or content would be available yet,” explained Wildcard in its post, an odd thing to say considering this new version also force you to pay even more than you did before, for content you also don’t know will be good or not yet.
The main point of contention for fans is that they’re being forced into buying an entirely new version of the game, with servers of the original being shut down meaning that there’s no other option if they want to keep playing (aside from private servers, which isn’t ideal for everyone). Wildcard explained in the post that “it would not be viable” to just make all these graphical changes in the original game, but didn’t explain why players have to buy the game again just to continue playing it.
Servers for Survival Evolved are set to close August 31, with Survival Ascended set to release the same month. All in all, a bit gross, so we’ll just see if players willingly migrate!