Never underestimate how much people like dinosaurs. Sandbox survival game ARK: Survival Evolved has sold 1 million copies since it launched on Steam Early Access last month.
Developer Studio Wildcard, who created the game in collaboration with Epic Games, revealed the numbers in an interview with Gamasutra, where they also talked more about the recent news that they would be opening up modding for the game. The team’s designed the game’s dinosaur AI using Unreal 4’s AI Logic tool, which means adding new critters to the island should be relatively simple.
“The reason behind that wasn’t just so we could take advantage of that system in our own development but so that players and developers could create their own types of creatures that fit in with the Ark ecosystem and make their own behaviors that integrate well with the rest of the ecosystem there on the island,” said Studio Wildcard co-creative director Jesse Rapczak.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney added that his company is intending to work with other developers to encourage modders to get involved, but ARK seemed like a good place to start.
”It’s not Epic sitting back and plotting what developers to work with, it’s empowering everybody to do what they would like. Ark has emerged as the first game to support modding this way with Unreal Engine 4. [We expect] there’ll be more, but this is a wonderful starting point, and a great example other developers can follow as well in building mod communities around their games.”
