ARK: Survival Ascended the highly anticipated remaster of ARK: Survival Evolved has launched on Steam in Early Access, the game rapidly gained attention, selling over 600,000 copies globally within just two weeks of its release.
The game quickly rose to become one of the top 6 games on Twitch, amassing over 5.6 million minutes watched on its launch day.
Despite its initial commercial success, ARK: Survival Ascended has faced its share of challenges. Players have raised concerns over various issues such as bugs, poor optimization, and a perceived lack of content. These issues have impacted the game’s reception, leading to mixed reviews from the gaming community.
On Steam, the game currently holds a “Mixed” rating. This rating reflects the divided opinion among players, with approximately 56% of more than 26,000 user reviews being positive.
The game reached a peak of 98,047 concurrent players on Steam, however, this figure is in contrast to ARK: Survival Evolved, which had a peak concurrent player count of nearly 250,000 and an overall positive rating of 83% based on over 500,000 reviews.
ARK: Survival Ascended transitioned to Unreal Engine 5 and incorporates several quality-of-life improvements.
The developers, Studio Wildcard, are committed to further supporting and developing ARK: Survival Ascended. They plan to address the current issues and then shift their focus to the much-anticipated sequel, “ARK 2,” which is expected to launch in 2024.
In the meantime, there have been delays in the release of the Xbox version of “ARK: Survival Ascended” due to unexpected issues in the certification process. The PlayStation version, however, remains on track for its planned launch by the end of the month. These developments indicate ongoing efforts to expand the game’s reach and improve its performance across different platforms.