Ark: Survival Evolved Players Furious As "Completely Free" Upgrade Costs $40
thegamer.comIt's been a pretty rough weekend for Ark fans. First, developer Studio Wildcard announced Ark 2 has been delayed to the end of 2024 after having first been promised for 2023. Then the year delay was followed by the announcement of Ark: Survival Ascended, a remastered version of Ark: Survival Evolved but rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5. The new game will have better graphics, new features like crossplay and cross-modding, and other QOL of upgrades that'll make it incompatible with the original Ark, so it can't be distributed as a free upgrade. Oh, and it'll cost you at least $40 to get it, too.
It gets worse. Studio Wildcard is ending support for the original Ark: Survival Evolved in June and will repurpose all its servers to support Ark: Survival Ascended when it arrives sometime in August. So, no new game, no free upgrade, and infrastructure that was supporting the existing game are being taken away to support all the new stuff that isn't here and isn't free.
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Naturally, Ark fans aren't happy. Especially because Ark co-director and Studio Wildcard co-founder said back in January that Survival Ascended would be a "free upgrade/remaster of ARK Survival Evolved in Unreal Engine 5."
Ark fans rightfully feel deceived, with one post on the Ark subreddit summarizing the community’s emotional state. Other posts are accusing Studio Wildcard of naked greed by asking players to pay twice for the same game. Ark isn't quite old enough for the excuse of a remake to sound believable.
However, others are suggesting that it's not Studio Wildcard, but publisher Snail Games that are the cause of the sudden turnabout regarding the UE5 upgrade. Another Ark fan
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