Powered by Unreal Engine 4, Ark: Survival Evolved takes on the survival genre with a unique blend of emergent multiplayer cooperation and competition. Players awake naked and starving on the beach of a mysterious island among a herd of other confused humans. On ARK, they must then hunt, harvest, craft, research technology, and build shelters to protect against scorching days, freezing nights, volatile weather systems, dangerous wildlife, and potential enemies.

Use cunning strategy and tactics to tame and ride the many dinosaurs and other primeval creatures roaming the dynamic, persistent ecosystems across land, sea, air, and even underground. Build your character’s strengths and gain items, skills, and pet creatures using in-depth role-playing systems. Start a tribe with hundreds of other players to survive and dominate competing tribes...and ultimately discover the ARK’s true purpose.

ARK: Survival Evolved is now having a Free Weekend on Steam, starting at 10 am PST today, Thursday, August 27, through 1 pm PST, Sunday, August 30. The open-world dinosaur adventure game is freely available to everyone for this limited time to jump in and start exploring the massive island. Additionally, ARK will also be updated on Friday, August 28, with DirectX 12 support for Windows 10 to deliver improved gameplay performance.

Throughout this Free Weekend there will be hundreds of new Official Servers featuring a one-time-only “Extinction Event” Meteor Impact, and special items to find randomly in Supply Crates. When you take these “Strange Artifacts” out of the crate it will have a Steam code on it, redeemable for 50% off of ARK: Survival Evolved, or in some cases a free copy of ARK: Survival Evolved. But beware!! If someone kills you, then they can take the code away and use it for themselves.

 At 6 am EST on Saturday, August 29, participation is open in the “Unnatural Selection” tournament to battle in 4-player tribes against hundreds of other players for a chance to ride the Dragon and earn cash prizes! This limited-time ‘ARK Survival of the Fittest’ competition features contestants dramatically descending from the sky onto the ARK in a circular formation via beams of light. There is a cache of valuable items in the center -- do survivors dash for the goods and fight it out, do they run into the forest and and hide, or do they freeze up from the sheer terror of death? A continually shrinking “ring of death” forces contestants ever closer together over time. The game is on -- who will tame the Dragon and bend it to their will?

The “Unnatural Selection” tournament runs from 6 am EST, Saturday, August 29 through 11 pm EST, Monday, August 31, with 24/7 open Preliminary Matches on three 100-player Official Servers. The battle will last for 2.5 hours each and the winning tribes will advance to a Pre-Championship Tournament set to take place at 10 am, Tuesday, September 1, where contestants will again duke it out until we are down to the final 36 Tribes who will get placed into an epic 144-player Championship Match set to take place at 2:30 pm EST and will be streamed on our SurvivetheARK Twitch Channel. The massive Championship battle will take place over the course of 4.5 hours and survivors will compete to win:

• Championship First Place Winning Team receives: $20,000 split 4 ways
• Championship Second Place Winning Team Receives: $10,000 split 4 ways
• Championship Third Place Winning Team Receives: $4,000 split 4 ways
• All 144 Players who make it into the Championship Match get a $100 Steam Gift Card!

This Survival of the Fittest tournament features distinct updates, most noticeably six new world changing Evolution Events and a first appearance by the Dragon! Midway through the match, the Dragon becomes available for taming at the central platform. Beware as he can only be ridden for a short time before he turns on his master! Furthermore, the dragon will reappear during extended sudden death to eliminate all remaining survivors if they are not sufficiently murdering each other!

Tame and ride one of 70-plus amazing dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, including gargantuan creatures on a scale never before seen in video games! Fly a Pterodactyl squadron over snow-capped mountains, race through the deep jungle with your pack of trained Raptors, tromp through a fortified enemy base along a convoy of gigantic Brontosaurus, or chase down prey on the back of a raging T-Rex. Players will quickly learn that dinosaurs aren’t the only dangerous creatures on the island. Other players are organizing rebel tribes to accumulate resources, experience, re-spawn points, and to construct sprawling villages and cities, with technology spanning the primitive stone-age to the modern electric-powered era and beyond. And they will fight to destroy anything they see as a threat.

Ark: Survival Evolved will include Oculus Rift VR/Morpheus support and a thorough integration of Steam community features such as Steam Economy and Steam Workshop for custom maps and mods. Players will also be able to host private/LAN servers, and have access to a custom-built version of the Unreal 4 Editor for creating mods. The world of ARK is designed to be player-oriented and ever-expanding!