It’s been a weird ride for ARK: Survival of the Fittest. The battle-oriented take was initially just an internally-developed mod for the survival themed ARK, eventually becoming a public total conversion and then a stand-alone game client. Now it looks like it will no longer be a separate product.
Survival of the Fittest will still operate as separate client, but will no longer be a free-to-play title, instead being rolled into purchases of the base ARK game. That’s not to say it will be abandoned–the team will still be working on bug fixes, but further content updates won’t come until they’ve expanded their studio.
Check out all the great existing community-made work with our list of the best ARK mods!
The developers cite two reasons for this. First, the release of the Development Kit adds a reason for every official ARK release to be covered under a single banner, so that modders will have access to everything with a single purchase. Second, for a developer without experience making free-to-play games, the resources required to design a compelling monetization model are out of their reach.
July’s Survivor League Final will take place as planned on August 6, and the League will be continuing through August, albeit with reset ELO to account for some major gameplay changes. The future of the League will be announced in some coming updates.
