Few people realise that December is when we’re at greatest risk from pirates, likely to mistake their bloodthirsty cries of “Yo ho!” for the merry “Ho ho ho!” of Father Christmas and run towards them rather than away. Capitalising on this behaviour, the creators of Ark: Survival Evolved tonight announced Atlas, an “open-world survival MMO” full of pirates. Word of Atlas leaked months ago but now it’s official – and it’s launching next week. It’ll have us craft things, build ships and bases, sail, battle ships, fight ludicrous creatures, and murder poor newbies, a bit Ark-y but much larger and on the seas. Have a peek. (more…)

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Happy Tuesday, Survivors! It's patch day and we've got two exciting things to chat about that we are currently working on. Structures Plus: Now that Extinction has been officially released, the team will be dedicating some time to the integration of Structures Plus. Pulling S+ into ARK's already existing structure system without causing issues with current structures is very important to us. There are also many features that exist in S+ that we cannot integrate into official servers without taking into consideration the impact on game balance. The plan is to integrate S+ on a feature by feature basis, prioritizing features that are compatible with the official game. We may integrate additional features gated by options for unofficials as time permits. https://gfycat.com/appropriatefearfulfiddlercrab Our first bit of integration starts immediately in today’s PC patch where we introduce the ability to pick up undamaged structures for free if it was placed in the last 30 seconds. You can pick up a placed structure by looking directly at the structure and pressing the interact key (E). This change will be included in the next patch for console, due later this week. Kibble Rework: Extinction's kibble setup (known as Augmented Kibble) was phase one of our kibble rework. We are currently in the process of assigning these new kibble

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Winter Wonderland Is Returning! https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/957475467226700473/6DF34CB6E9F659F41083801D4A1CFFE4E376FD0B/ Have you been Naughty or Nice this year? I've heard whispers from the elves and reindeer that a certain Mr. Claws may be dropping gifts for all of the good survivors this holiday season, and coal for the naughty ones too. ;) We'll have more information on this in the coming weeks! Dev Diary! https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/957475467226681329/6B079CD3246F3DC37564665E066BBCA094145720/ This weeks diary entry is brought to you by Lead Programmer, Chris Willoughby. This weeks dev diary is about Extinction-related game balance and also about the big fixing process of Extinction since it's initial release. ARK, at its core, is successful because it offers the best and most diverse survival experience that it can to each player who plays it, and the many options that we provide allows that to happen. There are many, many players that play our game over multiple platforms and each of them has a different definition of what’s most important to them, what ARK does well, and what it should do better. Early on we made a decision to offer a vast array of options, modes, maps, servers, and mods to get as close as we could to being the best survival game for everyone. This creates a major challenge

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Is… is it over yet? Are the Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals finally finished? Just a couple more hours to go now, you can do it deals herald, you can get through this. You’ve got a week and a half holiday coming up soon, just get through the afternoon and then you can go and lie in a dark room and not dream about Cyber Monday graphics card deals you might have missed for the seventh night running. Ahem. Sorry, I don’t know what came over me there. Probably the Cyber Monday PC gaming deals fatigue settling in, or the Black Friday fever dream I seem to have been living this past fortnight. But your deals herald is stronger than that. Nay, THE DEALER is stronger than that, and with a renewed sense of vigor that may in fact be frenzied despair, I thus present to you the final monolithic installment of our Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC deals bonanza. Gone are the deals swept away by the ever-grabbing hands of internet shoppers. All that’s left is the best of the best that are still up for grabs, from graphics cards and monitors to SSDs, gaming headsets, CPUs and mice and keyboards and more.

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I’m sure everyone’s feeling a bit of Black Friday fatigue by now (trust me, I want this all to be over just as much as you do), but in the interests of those after that one, last, final deal to end all deals, I present to you our newly refreshed Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals hub. I’ve cleared away all the deals that have been swept into oblivion by the almighty wave of discount-grabbers, leaving you with the best of the best PC gaming deals that are still available. Whether you’re after a new graphics card, monitor, SSD, gaming headset or even a new CPU, mouse and keyboard, your deals herald will provide. Here are all the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals you can grab right now. (more…)

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Hello! This week John is doing a super secret special mission (playing a video game) so I, one of the other Alices, have taken over the Steam Charts. I am afraid that I do not put as much time as John into constructing elegant jokes that are several layers deep, though, which means you might even be able to tell which games are charting. I understand if this is a huge disappointment. There are, however, some interesting shake-ups this week, if you’ve been following the Steam charts for a while. There are a couple of games that had their DLC charting last week without the main game, whilst the reverse is true this week. What does it all mean? I do not know. Consumer data is a mystery to me. Stop pre-ordering things. (more…)

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