In anticipation of the game’s retail release, Ark: Survival Evolved developer Wildcard has increased the price of its popular dinosaur survival game on Steam from $US29.99 to $US59.99. This makes sense considering it will be officially available on August 8 as a full retail game. So far, it’s just been in Early Access.
Posting on Twitter, Wildcard explained that yesterday’s Steam price increase had been made in order to “to ensure retail parity for the upcoming launch.” That launch, scheduled for August 8 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, will see the final retail version of Ark‘s base game priced at $59.99 across all formats, and its desert-themed expansion, Scorched Earth, priced at $19.99.
Although yesterday’s sizeable price increase on PC may have come as a surprise to some, Wildcard had in fact warned of the move in a news post on June 10. That announcement also telegraphed a price increase for the PS4 and Xbox One versions, which have been sporting their final, full-fat price tags since June 12. In other words, PC users got a momentary reprieve, but are now all caught up to reality.
Predictably, the response from within the PC Ark community has been mixed, ranging pure apoplectic outrage to intense sycophancy, leading me to once again suspect that Wildcard is sleeping with one half of its fanbase and has murdered the other half’s pets. “Classic Ark,” as one poster put it.
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11 responses to “Ark: Survival Evolved Just Doubled In Price On PC”
Was hardly worth it at $29.99us – Now it’s $79aud? Yeah – Doubt it’s going to pick up any new players now (Anyone who wanted to be playing it would be already)
Retail space still has plenty of pull.
Maybe. They haven’t got long left before it’s meant to be released, and it’s still a mess – I find I still have issues like dinos attacking things through walls (The fix last patch didn’t work for me)
Oh, I guess I should admit, they are working on it – But they need to focus less on new content and balance out what is in game already. Last few features have seen them introduce some options that reduce the “need” for mods though (No collision building, offline raid protection, beacon enhancement, for a couple)
That’s literally exactly what they’ve been doing. The dinosaurs are all done. Tek tier is done. Building parts are done.
Alpha was about getting all the content in the game.
Beta is a relatively quick intensive process, which is where the games entered now, where they tidy up the glitches and problems. It’s not a perfect game, but it’s better than most. They’ve rebalanced the game dramatically in the last dozen or so patches (Flyers being drastically reduced seemed dramatic at first until you realise people were solely using Argents and Quetzes, but now, land dinos suddenly become valuable again?)
The games not a mess, that’s hyperbolic. It’s pretty damn solid, but it still has things that do need tidying up. You want a mess? DayZ. I love that game but it’s a goddamn mess that each patch pretty much shows maybe they’re better off abandoning it. Ark however, each patch, the game gets tighter and tighter. Given the whole, entire team now is dedicated to just bugfixing, those bugs can be fixed in a pretty quick time period.
Given the content it’s got now, it’s definitely worth it. The last 3 – 4 patches have been majoritively bugfixing and the next few are solely dedicated to just that. Hell of a game. Those crying about its price increase seem to miss the point it had a lower pricing point because it was in alpha. Compensation for putting up with the bugs and irritations over the years. It’s been a great ride seeing this game evolve and come to fruition 🙂 Glad I went along for the ride.
You’ve inspired me to download it and give it a try again. I haven’t touched it since it started early access.
Language like that is a flag. You’re using past tense, implying that you’re moving on from the game, and I don’t think you’re the only one.
For all of these buggy open world betas and alphas being released, the appeal to the core audience is to be along for “the ride”, by the time all of the creases have been ironed out, all of the surprises have been squeezed out of the game, and the buzz moves on.
For reference, this originally came out on Early Access the same month as Batman : Arkham Knight. For a lot of people, doubling the price means that it’s now twice as expense as the current “buzz” – Player Unknown Battlegrounds.
I’m not doubting that the content in the game is worth full retail, and I think the devs have every right to price the final product that reflects the quality of the game, I just think they will struggle to pull too many new users now that the ride is over.
The VR support may be enough to draw new users in. I hope it will be, because I’ve heard a lot of good faith around this game.
Have to agree, while I have moved on to other games and haven’t touched ark in a few months now. I definitely got more than $30 worth, hell I probably easily got more out of it than most $100 games.
What i liked most about ark is you could play it how you wanted. Never lasted too long in official servers but spent a good time on unofficial and even more time on a private server i setup.
Well, that’s a guaranteed way to ensure I’ll never buy it again.
I got it on Steam at launch, and it performed so incredibly poorly it made some VERY bad early access games look good by comparison. Refunded it after an hour of trying to get ANY sort of performance out of it on multiple systems.
People can argue about how much better it has become, early access, etc… But I’m of the opinion that, early access or not, it was SO bad at launch that it should never have even been made publicly available at the time.
Still $21 on G2A for anyone who’s interested.
Don’t forget GST. It’s now US$65.98 (was US$32.98)