Ark: Survival Evolved's official servers switch off in just a few hours, paving the way for remake

rockpapershotgun.com:

Ark: Survival Evolved's official servers will switch off later today, at midnight UTC on September 30th (1am BST October 1st). The closure is part of paving the way for the piecemeal remake Ark: Survival Ascended, which will release in Steam Early Access in October.

At midnight UTC, a snapshot of all player saves uploaded to official servers will be taken, and then made available for players to download on Thursday, October 5th. This will allow players to host the save offline or on a private dedicated server if they wish to continue playing.

"Your items, dinos, and characters that have been uploaded to the ARK cloud will not be included in the save," says Studio Wildcard's explainer. "So, please make sure to download anything that you wish to keep from the cloud prior to the save on 9/30."

Ark: Survival Ascended ports the dino-breeding survival game to Unreal Engine 5, cleans up the codebase, and will eventually feature additional functionality such as crossplay with the console releases. Its main purpose is to help fund the creation of Ark 2, however.

"Developing a next-generation sequel while no longer releasing paid expansion packs has proven difficult for our Studio’s long-term survival, so we need to continue generating revenue while we develop ARK 2," says a Q&A posted to Steam today. "And finally, the ultimate reason: whereas ARK2 is being designed as a Souls-like adventure, we want to provide the community with an evergreen classic-ARK experience."

Survival Ascended will include new creatures and structures, a gently revamped island layout, and graphical upgrades to take advantage of Unreal Engine 5's watery, physicsy wizardry. Much of Survival Evolved's expansion content will be absent at launch, however,