"Ark: Survival of the Fittest was for us an experiment," says Studio Wildcard's co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz. "It started as a mod and it was pretty cool and pretty fun. I lot of these games that are very successful—like PUBG, like, you know, Counter-Strike or DotA—originate as mods and can switch over to standalone titles." Having begun life as a mod, Ark: Survival of the Fittest became a free-to-play standalone game in early 2016. As a promising battle royale-type venture—in a world prior to the likes of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds—it failed to take off and was later "reintegrated" into the main Survival Evolved game.   According to Steam Spy's data, less than 300 people played Ark: Survival of the Fittest concurrently yesterday—whereas over 350,000 took to the wargrounds of PUBG simultaneously. Given the unexpected, astronomical success of Brendan Greene's similarly styled battle royale game, I asked Stieglitz where he thinks SotF went wrong, and whether or not Studio Wildcard will revisit it down

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Yesterday, I spoke to Studio Wildcard's co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz—who is also Ark: Survival Evolved's lead designer, lead programmer, and development director. The conversation was scheduled ahead of a pretty significant announcement he and his team had planned for today: that the open world survival 'em up planned to wipe its servers, a "mass extinction" as a pre-prepared statement suggested, ahead of its August 8 PC launch.  This morning, I was informed this was no longer the case, that Stieglitz and Studio Wildcard had made an equally significant 180-degree turn and that Ark would no longer undergo the proposed server wipe. A recent "rash of cheating and hacking" within the game had been billed as grounds for the move, however by rolling out a "fresh cluster network of servers running new code and infrastructure" will prevent similar issues occurring down the line. Earlier today, I caught up with Stieglitz again to clarify the reversal. Stieglitz answered fully and, given the confusion tied to the relatively dramatic 180-turn, I've opted to publish his responses in full. PC Gamer: So, in less than 24-hours Studio Wildcard has made a pretty explicit 180 regarding its decision, or lack thereof, to wipe its servers. Jeremy Stieglitz:

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For some, Ark: Survival Evolved's recent controversial pre-full release price hike highlights the trouble with pricing Early Access games. For others, most specifically DayZ creator Dean Hall, it's "****ing OUTRAGEOUS." But wherever you stand with the issue, the open world dino hunter's Jeremy Stieglitz has explained the premature increase is tied to the game's physical launch.  "Admittedly, my intent, our intent, was to have the price hit the full retail price when the full retail launch occurred," Stieglitz, the game's lead designer, lead programmer and co-creative director, tells me. "That would have been at the retail launch, not prior to that. The reality turned out to be, and we didn't realise this until we got to the final phase of getting the game into retail channels, was that: in order to get the game into retailers—that is not digital retailers but physical ones, both for the physical disc PC version and the console version—the retailers and distributors wouldn't take it if the digital versions was cheaper than the retail version.

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"Shh. Their vision is based on price movement..." Game pricing is a thorny question that we’ve taken a crack at before , but this week we’re dealing with two considerably thornier questions: how much should an Early Access game cost, and should that cost increase when it officially launches? Last week, Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard announced that its dinosaur survival game was getting a price increase on Steam from $30 to $60 (or £23 to £50) “to ensure retail parity” (match the price of the console versions) ahead of the game’s August launch. Many are less than pleased with the price hike.  Some Ark fans suggest that, given ongoing bugs and server issues, the game isn’t worth $60. Some who’ve held off on purchasing the game are unwilling to pay double the Early Access price. DayZ creator and Ark fan Dean Hall called the increase “greed—pure and simple” in a series

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Former DayZ developer Dean Hall published a series of tweets about the price increase of Ark: Survival evolved, which jumped from $30 to $60 a month before its planned departure from Early Access in August. In his tweets, Hall called Ark's price change "****ing OUTRAGEOUS" (asterisks his) and attributed it to "greed - pure and simple." "We should be encouraging games to stay in Early Access until they are finished." Dean Hall Hall counts himself a "huge fan" of Studio Wildcard's game. "I absolutely think the game would be worth it when it reaches a stable state," he said in another tweet. "Emphasis on the last few words!" In other replies on Twitter, Hall said that Ark is "nowhere near close" to being finished, calling the dinosaur survival game "very buggy." DayZ, which Hall began developing in 2012, entered Steam Early Access in December of 2013, and four years later it is now preparing to enter beta. Hall left Bohemia Interactive in 2014 to found a new game studio, RocketWerkz.  We asked Hall via email what Ark needs to do to justify its $60 price, what effect Studio Wildcard's decision to release paid DLC had, and how developers

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If you've been on the fence as to whether or not to purchase Studio Wildcard's dinosaur survival game, you've officially missed your window to get in on Early Access pricing. Ark: Survival Evolved is now $59.99 in the Steam store, "to ensure retail parity" for the game's full launch in August, according to Ark's official twitter account. Ark, in Early Access since 2015, has been priced at $29.99 on Steam, and has featured a number of sales that have dropped it as low as $10 at times. However, as its Steam page warned: "... the game will be lower priced through Early Access, relative to its final full-version retail price." That full-version price arrived for consoles a few weeks ago, and while we haven't quite at reached the August 8 release date, Ark is now full price on PC as well. If you bought Ark prior to today, naturally, you don't need to sweat the price increase: you'll own the full game when it leaves Early Access.

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