ARK: Survival Ascended News

What a whirlwind of a week it's been for both our team and all of you. We've ridden the exhilarating highs of ASA's PC release, watching it claim the top spot on the Steam charts, and we've ridden the rollercoaster of post-launch LiveOps with its share of hitches and victories. On the flip side, there's no denying the disappointment accompanying the delay of ASA's console launch. We felt it, too. Let’s get straight into the console news:

Xbox Series X/S and Windows:
We’re on track for a November 14th (Tuesday) launch day! As we get closer to the launch, we’ll share more information on precisely when it should be available for you to download. The Xbox version will be up-to-spec with the latest PC functionality as of Nov 14, and will launch directly into crossplay with the PC version (along with new servers, including Xbox-only servers).

Playstation:
We’re hoping to have a more precise date to share with you soon as we’re currently finalizing this with Sony, but it is slated for the end of November. We know this isn’t ideal, but we’re optimistic we’ll be able to share a date very soon!

Following the PC launch and the information and data we’ve gathered, we’ve decided to make some changes to our plans for the console launch. Here’s how everything is going to shake up:

Xbox Launch

• Cross-platform with Steam will be enabled Day One.
  
• We’ll be onlining a new set of Official Servers for the respective game modes (PVP, PVE, and Small Tribes). These servers will be running boosted rates for a period of time to allow players starting on them to catch up. Our hope is to synchronize the rates by mid-December.
  
• We’ll also be onlining our first set of console-specific servers at this moment so that players who do not want to play on crossplay can play on those.
  

PlayStation Launch

• Cross-platform with Steam and Xbox will be enabled Day One
  
• We’ll be onlining another new set of Official Servers for the respective game modes (PVP, PVE, and Small Tribes). These servers will be running with even higher boosted rates for a period of time to allow players starting on them to catch up. Our hope is to synchronize the rates by mid-December.
  
• We’ll also be onlining an additional set of console-specific servers with higher rates that will get synchronized by mid-December
  

Of course, there have been a few bumps along the way, and we're working hard to address any issues that players are reporting. We’ve put out a record number of patches this week, but the patches can be summarized as:

• Bug fixes: We've fixed a number of bugs, including server crashes, dino spawn issues, and mesh exploits.
  
• Performance improvements: We've made a number of performance improvements, including optimizing the dynamic navmesh system, server code (80%+ reduction in out-of-memory issues), and foliage. We're also pleased to announce that we've significantly reduced server RAM usage. This should improve the player experience and help make servers more accessible for everyone.
  
• Security improvements: We've added client-side protections to prevent players from listing unofficial servers as fake officials, and we've fixed a number of exploits.
  

For detailed patch notes, visit this page.

We know there is still plenty more work to be done on all of those fronts, but we're committed to making ARK: Survival Ascended the best survival game it can be. We'll continue to release patches with bug fixes and performance improvements in the coming days, along with major feature additions over the coming weeks (and introducing Public Test Realm next week – more on that soon). In the meantime, thank you for your support and patience. We hope you're enjoying ARK: Survival Ascended so far!



It is with a heavy heart that we announce the delay of Extralife 2023 from November 4th to December 2nd. We know this is late notice, and we apologize for any inconvenience it may cause to our ExtraLife team members and those who join the stream to engage with us every year. If you’d still like to stream on Game Day, we more than encourage you to do so and we’d be happy to provide support. Also, if you want to wait for our stream day, that works too 🙂

This decision was not made lightly, as we have participated in ExtraLife’s “Game Day” event for 6 years. Extralife is not only a day where we come together to raise money for children in need, but it’s also a day that we cherish because we get to hang out with the ARK community. We want to make sure that the event is a success for all of our participants, donors, and sponsors, and we believe that moving the date is necessary to ensure that we can hit the mark. That also means we need to make sure that as many ARK players as possible can take part and because of the console delay, we need to push back the date.

Extralife is one of our favorite events of the year, and we love seeing the community come together to raise money for such a worthy cause. We can’t wait to run it with you in a few weeks! Thank you for your understanding and support. We look forward to seeing you on December 2nd for Extralife 2023!

More about Extra Life Gameday

The Studio Wildcard Extra Life Team

On the Studio Wildcard Extra Life Team page, you can donate to the cause or join our fundraising team.





This weekend, the Official Network will be receiving bonus rates! It will be active until Monday, November 5th.

• PVP/PVE: 1.5x Harvesting, Taming, and Experience + 1.5x Breeding
  
• Small Tribes: 4x Harvesting, Taming, and Experience + 3.5x Breeding
  
• ARKpocalypse: 4.5x Harvesting, Taming and Experience + 4.5x Breeding
  

Fan Art Gallery | Screenshot Gallery | Artist Feedback Form

Help us discover your talent by tagging your art with #ARKPhotoMode or #ARKart on social media!



Creator: Syntac
Syntac showcases and discusses 10 thrilling additions made to ARK Survival Ascended. Which one are you the most excited about?
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Creator: CHipZz
CHipZz demonstrates how to construct a workshop that includes a designated space for housing your harvesting tames. The video offers a step-by-step, voice-over tutorial, ensuring it's easy for you to follow along and construct the workshop.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Gigantoraptor and Giga Baby from ASA by кал калыч


Eerie Otters by N4STYR4BBiT


Looks like someone is going to feast on calamari today! by @ScutalTheLizard


Yutyrannus by @therbisofficial


I have returned from the dreaded art block to post this. by @SoupAscended


The journey continues by @k3zk_627


Sinomacrops is baby by ark-erika




Not a bad little view by @TheAx3Man


Thank you for the photo mode by @TiiaAurora


Some beautiful screenshots from ARK ASCENDED by @Alexand90575037


This game looks like a damn movie by @Nekatus


Om Nom Nom.... Tail. by @_NERDPotion


Enjoy your weekend!
Studio Wildcard

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark

Discord: discord.com/invite/playark

Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark

Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark

Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark

Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110

Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark

Threads: threads.net/@survivetheark

Official Wiki: ark.wiki.gg

ARK: Survival Ascended has peaked at 98,047 concurrent players on 29 October 2023 within the release week.
View charts and more statistics on our website.

Congratulations Survivors! You (and us too) survived a full day and night on the ARK! And what an eventful day it has been.

A lot’s been going on, and we thought it would be good to wrap up the day with a quick update regarding the state of the game and our plans over the days and weeks ahead.

Let’s discuss a few key topics: the first is no stranger to ARK games on Day One, and that’s client-side performance. Working from anecdotal feedback and hard data provided by players, we deployed a new client-side update released tonight that will improve your game's framerate. The update adds a number of optimizations and better settings assignments for each Graphics Quality mode, and you'll get an immediate gain upon trying out the new build.

Once you've got the update, please change your "Graphics Quality" setting to your preferred setting (Low/Medium/High/Epic) to take full advantage of the new under-the-hood settings. Tomorrow and into the weekend, we'll release further improvements to client performance, including generating a Pipeline State Object Cache to reduce/eliminate graphics stuttering & hitching and further optimizing the sky/cloud/atmosphere shaders. Thank you for bearing with us as the team works to ensure the game runs better for various configurations, including this first set of optimizations and the many still to come.

The second is a one-two combo: server-side stability and optimization. The team has been battling a number of never-before-seen crashes since the game went live (such is life — 1 hour of live play is equivalent to a month of internal QA). Honestly, the floodgates had opened, and at one point, servers were coming down faster than we could put them online! Thankfully, as of our latest server-side build, we’ve managed to get the servers in a much more stable state, eliminating over 95% of server crashes. There’s still more we plan to address, and you can expect more deployments to happen over the next few days to ensure as much uptime as possible and launch additional servers based on capacity needs!

As for how well the servers run, we’ve been collecting data over the last 24 hours to identify major server performance pain points. This will be a major focus for the engineering team, and we’ll be looking to introduce as many optimizations as possible. After a week or so, we plan to have a PTR branch of the game available to test out some of our riskier optimizations before we set them live to the public. But for now, we’ll continue operating from the main branch of the game as we’ve just launched and are in rapid patch mode!

And lastly, the ARK Devkit (for ASA) is now available! For those unfamiliar, the ARK DevKit is a custom version of the Unreal Engine 5 Editor that provides dedicated infrastructure to help you take your imagination into the game of ARK: Survival Ascended. The kit is available to download HERE, and we’ve got a quick FAQ you can check out HERE.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We’re really excited to get this out to you and cannot wait to see you build beyond boundaries in ARK: Survival Ascended!

This is only the beginning of ASA’s Early Access journey; there’s still much more we plan to do to the game as we develop it. This means working through the rough patches and introducing new features, content, and gameplay. We cannot wait to get all that and more in your hands. But for now, we’ll say thank you for all your feedback, support, and excitement. It’s been wonderful watching so many of you begin the first steps of your ASA adventures, and we can’t wait to see where it takes us!

Good night! ❤️