ARK Survival Ascended has gone live on Steam via Early Access.
Studio Wildcard’s latest update for ARK is now available to buy. Unfortunately, some of the early buyers aren’t reading the fine print, and posting reviews that clearly don’t demonstrate an understanding of the Early Access process.
In any case, there are also clear valid criticisms that optimization varies per PC build. Some gamers are claiming they experience no issues, and are even running the game at 60 FPS. Others aren’t able to get the game to load properly at all.
As a reminder, Steam advertises Early Access as an opportunity to gain instant access to play the game immediately with the understanding that the game is not complete. Players can get involved with the game as it develops, but Steam does not provide guarantees that the game will change in time.
There are definitely dozens of cases where games in Early Access don’t make it through the threshold, with developers dropping out for various reasons. But Steam has made this availability possible in their platform so that more games can get the chance to pitch themselves to the public, and see if they can pass or fail.
Studio Wildcard is a strange animal in this regard. The ARK games are perennially subject to criticism because they are so frequently technically broken, for one reason or another, to the point that it’s a meme about the franchise as a whole.
But against all odds, the ARK games have also found a loyal fanbase. More than just the coterie of survival game players, they have real ARK fans, who stick through every messy buggy update, because they like the game itself for all its faults.
As detailed in their interview with Xbox Wire, Studio Wildcard, with help from Grove Street Games, is working to push themselves again by bringing ARK up to date with Unreal Engine 5. The big promise they have this time is custom modding for all platforms, consoles and PCs. While they have an existing dev kit available on Epic Launcher, they are planning to build a CurseForge mod browser which will bring this feature to all platforms. Studio Wildcard also claims to have already talked with several other game studios and developers to make crossover content, that will also be coming in the next few months and years.
ARK Survival Ascended will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. You can watch the Xbox Preview trailer below.
