ARK: Survival Evolved – Unreal Engine 5-Remake must now be paid for after all

Back in January, the developers at Studio Wildcard were still talking about a free Unreal Engine 5 upgrade for the six-year-old survival hit ARK: Survival Evolved.

Now it’s clear: If you want the upgrade, you have to pay for it – and the players are anything but thrilled.

From free to paid

In January, Studio Wildcard co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz posted a tweet talking about an upgrade or remaster of ARK: Survival Evolved. It stated:

To clarify: the UE5 tease a couple weeks back is referring to in-the-works complete free upgrade/remaster of ARK Survival Evolved in Unreal Engine 5. Not a cinematic. We havent officially announced the ARK UE5 upgrade yet ’cause there’s other major things we wanna show then as well

This tweet has aged badly, because last week the UE5 remaster was now officially announced.
It will be called ARK: Survival Ascended – but there’s no mention of “free” anymore.

Instead, players will have to buy an “ARK Respawned Bundle” to get the remaster. This includes ARK: Survival Ascended and the recently postponed ARK 2 for $50.
This bundle is said to be available “for up to a year” and will likely be available starting in late August.

After that, both ARK: Survival Ascended and ARK 2 will be available for purchase separately.
However, players on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 probably won’t get a chance to play this remaster at all.

In addition to that, you will still have to buy the DLCs for the remaster separately.
The “Explorer’s Pass” for $20 will include the expansions Scorched Earth, Aberration and Extinction, while the Genesis Pass for $20 will include Genesis Part 1 and Genesis Part 2.

All in all, you’ll have to shell out $90 for the complete ARK remaster experience, regardless of whether you already own all the content for the base game.

The launch of ARK: Survival Ascended will also result in the shutdown of all official ARK: Survival Evolved servers for Xbox, PlayStation and PC, which will limit players.
Support for the Primitive+, Split Screen, and procedurally generated maps features will also be discontinued at that time:

With the launch of ASA at the end of August, we will be taking down all Official Servers on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC for ARK: Survival Evolved – at that time, the final save-datas from the ARK: Survival Evolved Official Servers will be uploaded for players to re-host on their own servers or play in singleplayer/non-dedi, as well as slightly earlier snapshots. You will still be able to play on single-player, non-dedicated, player-dedicated, and unofficial servers. ARK: Survival Ascended will have its own fully supported Official Network for all platforms.

Reactions of the community

The reactions of players and fans are rather negative. Many criticize the change of direction and are irritated that they have to pay up to 90 Euros for a remaster.
Others defend the step and point out that it will also include the costs for ARK 2.

However, it is of course unclear whether the new release date of the end of 2024 can be met at all. And making advance payments for a game that will only be released in a little more than a year sounds like an uncertain investment to many.

Whether the promised features for ARK: Survival Ascended – including cross-play for all platforms, holiday events, and regular content updates – can change that is questionable.

However, Studio Wildcard has already announced the first expansion pack for ARK: Survival Ascended.
It will contain four new creatures and story elements, and the release is planned for Q4 2023.