ARK: Survival Evolved got another map today, a Tolkien-inspired landscape that doubles the game’s size. But the game’s developer, Studio Wildcard, didn’t make it. It was a mod from the community that became popular, prompting Studio Wildcard to offer a bunch of money for it and hiring the guy.
This map, called The Center, is the second mod plucked from the community. Only two mods have become official so far. The next one, a mod called Primitive+ that forces players to use ancient toolsets to advance, arrives in July.
The way it works, according to ARK lead designer Jeremy Stieglitz, is that Studio Wildcard identifies a mod they’re interested in and offers “a considerable amount of money”, which varies on the time they have been working on it. With both of these mods, that came out to “multiple months’ salary for a creative”.
“There’s no ARK Mod EULA that gives us any inherent rights to use their work,” said Stieglitz, “so it’s entirely up to these authors whatever they want to do when we contact them. But of course, for a mod author this program becomes a chance to have their work featured in front of a huge audience (6 million strong) as well as be paid for it, and continue to develop it for that eager audience.”
Studio Wildcard was impressed by The Center and Primitive+ enough to offer both of them jobs, which they have since accepted. That part won’t be the norm.
“Going forward,” said Stieglitz, “we intend to continue to regularly select what we consider to be the most and most polished Mods from among the many thousands available on Steam Workshop — often identified through open-entry cash-prize Mod Contests, such as the one we’re currently running, which we use to gauge community enthusiasm. And then when we determine what we think are the standout exemplars, we’ll make more offers.”
Very cool.
Comments
6 responses to “If Your ARK: Survival Evolved Mod Is Good Enough, The Developers Will Buy It”
Well I guess this should give them more time to actually make the Xbox Version playable.
Looks disgusting.
Well you may as well move on because its doubtful that it will ever look better graphically.
The game has a lot of moving parts at one time and unlike games like Dynasty Warriors there is no limit on how many units can interact at a given time. The closest thing to it is a hard limit on spawn entities within active cells.
I have moved on. I installed it and played it for a few hours with friends but the crappy resolution, horrible texture pop in and just all round “fuzziness” of everything was enough to turn me off.
Im not even a stickler for graphics but I just find them so bad.
I dont believe for a second they cant make it better. I have played far cry primal on my xbox and the difference is night and day. This game still looks like a 360 game.
Playing this map before the update and it is amazing! Theres a fricken cave under the map which is the “center of the earth”, its jaw droppingly good. Way better than the base map, “the island”
Nice. The old ‘glass mod’ should be bought, it’s fantastic. Same HP as standard metal, but allows transparent building pieces, as should the newer ‘homing pidgeon’ mod for the birds.
they still developing? its supposed to be released
Well actually they said 12 months from EA open, which was technically June 2, 2015.
That being said, in its current state, they are not going to be finished then, not they aren’t doing a good job with the game so far. In fact, now that they have opened the Island servers, once I sort out moving, I may end up spending another 1400+ hours on the game because a new official map is exactly what I have been looking for. Something to add a sense of wonder and marvel again