ARK: Survival Ascended Release Delayed, Plans EA with Less Content

Published: Jul. 01, 2023
Updated: Jul. 01, 2023

German English

Wildcard has done it again! Unsurprisingly for many ARK fans, the news that the planned release of the ARK 1 remake, ARK: Survival Ascended, has been postponed. But there is more bad news.

Here's what's going on: in the latest Community Crunch 368, developer Wildcard announces to its fans that the planned release of ARK: Survival Ascended in August will be postponed until the end of the year. They cite difficulties with the UE5 as the main reason. However, long-time fans may have already expected this, as Wildcard has a reputation in the ARK fan community for never having kept to a planned release.

ARK: Survival Ascended Postponed – When will it be Released?

Originally, the remake of ARK 1, which is called ARK: Survival Ascended, or “ASA” for short, was supposed to be released in August 2023. The official ARK 1 servers were also supposed to go offline in time for this. However, the developers at Wildcard have spoken out and announced that they will have to postpone the planned release.

When is the release now? The new planned release is in October 2023, when ASA will enter a one-year Early Access phase and will be available for $44.99.

What are the reasons? The postponement is due to the Unreal Engine 5.2, on which the remake is based. While ARK 1 still runs on Unreal Engine 4, Survival Ascended is being developed with the current UE5 engine. This is new territory for the developers, especially regarding cross-platform modding. With ASA and later ARK 2, it should be possible to install mods on the PC and consoles. For Wildcard, this is a significant undertaking still causing them problems.

"We’ve found it challenging working with Unreal Engine 5.2, but at the same time, it is incredibly exciting. We’re discovering new ways each day to push the technology to the next level; combined with the work needed to support a fully cross-platform-moddable game ecosystem on consoles and PC, it’s clear that we’ll need a bit more time."

Due to the postponement, the shutdown of the official ARK servers will also be moved back. They will remain online until 30 September 2023.

And if you are now wondering when Wildcard will show the first gameplay of ASA, they also have an answer: shortly before release, when the final product is ready to be shown. So we can expect a presentation of Survival Ascended at the end of September.

ASA to be released with less content

The one-year Early Access phase is mainly to optimize the game until the full release at the end of 2024 and to recreate all content for all expansions. Originally, it was planned to release the original ARK, “The Island”, and the first expansion, “Scorched Earth” in August. Instead, only The Island will be released in October, and Scorched Earth will be released in December. The rest of the content will come in the course of next year.

"We’ve also decided to separate the release date of The Island and Scorched Earth. With what we’ve learned about remastering The Island from the ground-up, it wouldn’t be feasible to complete Scorched Earth to a standard we’re happy with. So for now, we’re going to plan that Scorched Earth will be coming to ASA in December this year, Ragnarok and Aberration will follow in Q1 2024, and the rest of the maps beyond then."

It remains to be seen whether ARK: Survival Ascended will really be launched in October or whether Wildcard will postpone the release again. We will keep you up to date on this.

Sascha Asendorf is the co-founder of Guided.news and has been running online magazines in the gaming sector since 2013. Starting with a strong focus on survival games, Sascha now deals a lot with role-playing games and is an expert on survival and RPG titles like Conan Exiles, Baldurs Gate 3 & Cyberpunk 2077.
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