Over the weekend, ARK: Survival Evolved fans and a Studio Wildcard developer clashed when, in response to player complaints that Wildcard will charge for DLC for its unreleased early access title, a QA dev told one player his “post screamed of rage because you are too cheap to pony up 20 dollars for a game worth 60 which we undercharged for in the first place.” That dev did apologize for his outburst, and Wildcard hasn’t mentioned the incident directly, it has now explained that the reasoning behind the release schedule is more than just “money”:
“[W]e are absolutely committed to driving aggressive development towards a solid, feature-robust game launch for ARK: Survival Evolved. […] [O]ur 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. […] 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.”
Ahead of Scorched Earth and the formal launch, Wildcard says, expect the 247 patch this week, breeding phase 3, the boss ascension cycle, tek tier items, the explorer note system, and then procedurally generated ARKs.
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