Popular Survival Game Review Bombed; Paid Remaster Enraged Players

A few days ago, Wildcard announced a big delay affecting ARK 2, which is eventually expected to be released only at the end of next year. To compensate fans for this setback, at the same time it was revealed that ARK: Survival Ascended, a remaster of the first installment being developed on Unreal Engine 5, will debut in August 2023. This announcement angered the fans to the point that they flooded the original's card on Steam with negative reviews.

1. In the weeks leading up to the remaster's announcement, ARK: Survival Evolved received between a few and a dozen negative reviews a day on Steam. The numbers began to rise rapidly starting on April 1 (the date of ARK: Survival Ascended's reveal). The worst was yesterday, when ARK: Survival Evolved received 227 negative reviews.
2. ARK: Survival Evolved has a total of more than 472,000 reviews, so the review bombing is unable to significantly affect the game's reception stat on Steam - 83% of all player reviews are positive.

The influx of negative reviews began on April 1, the day ARK: Survival Ascended was announced. Source: Steam.

Gamers have solid reasons to be furious.

1. ARK: Survival Ascended is expected to cost $50 (in a bundle that will also include ARK 2) and, to make matters worse, the game will not include refreshed versions of two DLCs (Explorer's Pass and Genesis Pass). They will be released this year and next year, and will cost $20 each.
2. This is not the end of the bad news - at the time of ARK: Survival Ascended's release the official servers of the original ARK: Survival Evolved will be shut down. Fortunately, this does not mean the end of the original, as players will still be able to play on private servers.
3. On Reddit, players are accusing Wildcard of greed and an attempt to force the community to switch to the remaster.

Gamers are also upset about the fact that ARK: Survival Ascended will not be available for purchase as standalone prodyction. The fact that for $50 you will get both this game and ARK 2, seems like a good deal, but it's hardly surprising that many gamers are dissatisfied, given the fact that they will wait until at least the end of next year for the sequel.

An additional problem is that next year's release of ARK 2 will most likely take place in early access, and many people would prefer to wait to buy it until the game reaches a suitable level of refinement.

1. ARK - official website
2. ARK: Survival Evolved - game guide

ARK: Survival Evolved

August 29, 2017

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