Powered by Unreal Engine 4, Ark: Survival Evolved takes on the survival genre with a unique blend of emergent multiplayer cooperation and competition.

In ARK: Survival Evolved, survivors wake up stranded, naked, freezing, and starving on a mysterious island where they must hunt, harvest, craft items, grow crops, and build shelters to survive in every biome. Survivors will tame, train, and ride more than 100 stunning dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, including gargantuan creatures on a scale never before seen in video games! In every available biome -- Jungle, Snow, Swamp, Redwood, and Desert -- you’ll be able to fly an armed Pteranodon squadron over the snow-capped mountains, race through a thick jungle with your pack of trained Raptors, tromp through a fortified enemy base with a convoy of gigantic Brontosaurus, or chase down prey on the back of a raging T-Rex.

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.

We've got some critical news to share with you all today; it's going to be a roller coaster of emotions as there's a bit of disappointing news, but worry not as you've got a lot to look forward to as well!

Let's address the mammoth in the room. Official Release. As of today, ARK has completed its Gold Master and certification for retail release. This process took a little longer than expected and as a result, our release date has been pushed back to August the 29th. We're deeply apologetic for those who were negatively affected by the delay; it sucks, it wasn't what we had wanted, nor planned but where we currently stand. We wanted to address this sooner but did not want to make any statements until we were completely sure of what was going to happen.

Now you're probably wondering what this means for the next few weeks and how does it change our current plans?

Free DLC: Ragnarok

Ragnarok's new release date on console and upcoming PC update will now also be the 29th of August. This extended time will allow further development of the map and you guys can expect a gigantic update, even bigger than we initially thought.

On the date of release, the overground of the world will increase by approximately one quarter, which is near-enough a 'The Island-sized' expansion; the update will feature new biomes, a coastal Wyvern canyon, an epic boss encounter, new engrams, and something secret the Ragnarok team are cooking up! We will also be adding their custom creatures to our main game, which will allow players to transfer them via the CrossARK system, so you'll be able to bring over your Ice Wyverns to The Island, The Center, and Scorched Earth!

Development plans: immediate, mid-month, and going forward.

Over the next few weeks, you will see a lot of priority placed on the PC and multiplayer versions of the game, now that we're completely wrapped up with our gold master. We are planning some immediate patches to take care of community concerns, as well as some mid-month goals and more going forward.

First of all, there will be a lot of focus on PC Performance this month (don’t worry console-users, you’ll be receiving these updates too!). We will be porting over a lot of the improvements we made on console, as well as working with our industry partners to bring up that PC performance to get you the best possible experience.

Secondly, we will be immediately (as I type this the engineers and gameplay programmers are working on the update) showing some love to these aspects of the game:

Multiplayer Bosses; let's face it, they're ridiculous, we know why and we're going to fix it. You'll soon be able to enter the boss arenas and fight bosses at reasonable difficulty, it'll still be a challenge, just no longer a monumental/near-impossible task.

The Baby-to-Juvie-Stasis issue; that's also getting fixed. For those not familiar, this is the problem where baby-creatures are entering stasis which (sort of) prevents them from ageing, and therefore they're not eating from troughs which result in death.

The Center & Under the Mesh; we're going to be implementing a technical solution to stop jerks from going under the map and raiding people. This one will take a little bit longer, but we'll have it in as soon as possible.

That's not all though! We will be releasing a major version update in the middle of the month which will significantly assist with DDoS mitigation, resolve the exploit which has allowed players to dupe, and of course not to be forgotten, but allow players to rent PC-dedicated Console Servers! We're also going to create an option to stop creatures from following you with their big heads (we'd do this one sooner, but it requires a major version update, so we thought it best come with the other significant changes mentioned above :p).

Not to mention, we'll be taking care of server crash-exploits as and when they happen, working on server performance so that you will have a smoother and stable experience.

Thank you so much for your patience the past few months and all the support! We will make sure that ARKs launch is a successful one and the game is in a healthy state. It's going to be a hectic few weeks ahead, and we're very excited! We still have a lot more planned for ARK, and even after release, the journey will continue!

We've started a thread to collect questions for our next ARK Digest, so if you've got something you want to ask - let us know and we might pick it out in the next post!

KeyFeatures

• TAME, TRAIN, RIDE, and BREED DINOSAURS: Command the most amazing creatures from throughout Earth's biological history, with more than 100 dinosaurs and creatures planned for full launch. 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.
• CRAFT AND BUILD: Using any means necessary to survive, players will craft weapons, clothes, and items, and build shelters. Plant, harvest, build, level-up, and customize everything visually and functionally, including procedurally-generated RPG statistics for creatures, characters, resources, clothing, gear, and weapons both primitive and modern.
• DISCOVER: Explore a massive living ecosystem and find the means to survive, thrive, and possibly escape the ARK Island.
• TEAM UP TO SURVIVE: Start a tribe with dozens of other players in a large-scale multiplayer online first person environment to survive and dominate competing tribes...and to ultimately discover ARK’s true purpose.
• JOIN A TRIBE: The 'Tribe' system encourages cooperation, by supporting dynamic parties to share resources, XP, and re-spawn points. 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.
• A LARGER UNIVERSE: Travel between Online ARKs to meet new players, face new threats, and discover new civilizations!