Stuck in development limbo for years, ARK 2 is now planned for 2028

Since most people had pretty much forgotten this game even existed, yesterday’s news came as a big surprise. ARK 2 from Studio Wildcard is now reportedly coming in 2028. It’s been about five years since the game was first announced, when we got that teaser trailer at The Game Awards, and after so many delays, a lot of players had started to think it might never actually release.

ARK 2 is planned for 2028

ARK 2 was first revealed at The Game Awards back in 2020 with a cinematic trailer starring Vin Diesel as Santiago, who’s also an executive producer on the game. It was originally supposed to come out in 2022 and is being built in Unreal Engine 5, which is a big step up from the original ARK. Unfortunately, getting comfortable with UE5 has been tough for Studio Wildcard, and that’s been a major reason why development has been slow and the game keeps getting delayed.

Because of these technical challenges, the team shifted a lot of their focus to ARK: Survival Ascended, a UE5 remaster of the first game. The idea was to learn the engine better and bring in some money while ARK 2 stayed in development. As a result, ARK 2 slipped from its original 2022 window to 2023, then again to late 2024, with very few updates or gameplay shown along the way.

By mid-2025, Wildcard’s co-founders confirmed that ARK 2 was still only at a “vertical slice” stage (an early prototype) and that they’d need about 18 months of full-team focus just to get it ready for Early Access. That pushed expectations to around 2027 at the earliest.

But just yesterday, the official The Game Awards X account posted that ARK 2 is planned for a 2028 launch. Studio Wildcard hasn’t confirmed that themselves yet, but since the game was originally revealed at The Game Awards, it’s reasonable to think this info might be legit.

The ARK series still maintains a dedicated fanbase, but the recent Aquatica expansion for ARK: Survival Evolved, intended to mark the franchise’s 10th anniversary, totally flopped. The announcement got slammed because of an AI-generated trailer, which was eventually pulled from YouTube, and the DLC’s launch ended up being one of the worst in the franchise’s history. Right now, ARK: Aquatica has only about 13% positive reviews on Steam, with most of the feedback being overwhelmingly negative.

As for ARK 2, the fact that it has been stuck in development limbo for so long isn’t exactly reassuring. For now, all we can do is hope that the game stays on track for its planned 2028 release and see for ourselves when it finally arrives.

ARK II

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