ARK Survival Evolved Dev Responds to Expansion Criticism

Studio Wildcard’s ARK: Survival Wildcard released Scorched Earth, the first paid expansion for the survival title, recently and it’s garnered quite the negative response. The reason for this is given the game’s Early Access nature, many players are concerned about the developer devoting resources to finishing the game as opposed to trying to earn more money through the release of additional content.

These concerns were addressed in an official blog post with Studio Wildcard noting that, “Put simply: we are absolutely committed to driving aggressive development towards a solid, feature-robust game launch for ARK: Survival Evolved. Everyone at Wildcard wakes up every day thinking about how we can make ARK into a better game today than it was the day before.

“It’s not always easy, but our intent is ever-forward progress towards a retail release that will be far more ambitious in scope and features than our original vision when we launched ARK into Steam Early Access in June 2015. Your feedback enables us to continually expand the game to become better than ever!”

And while you may not like that Scorched Earth is available while the game itself is unfinished, it will enable easier integration of future expansions. “Scorched Earth: Our original vision for ARK always included the creation of Expansion ARKs, along with the infrastructure and technical systems to transfer data dynamically between live ARKs. We determined that it is more sound to iterate on these systems during Early Access than after retail launch, given the significant risks involved if we didn’t ‘get it right’.

“While that meant unveiling the first Expansion early, it also means an easier time integrating further post-launch Expansions into the ARK network. We understand that this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and we appreciate the enjoyment people seem to be getting out of this initial view of how Expansion ARKs can work. Now that we have the systems in place to support them, we can ensure minimal integration issues with subsequent releases after ARK: Survival Evolved itself has launched.”

Thoughts on the developer’s response? Let us know in the comments along with whether you’d pick up Scorched Earth anytime soon.