Back in April, Studio Wildcard announced their Official Mods Program. This program allows mod creators to potentially add their creation to the official game, not as a Steam Workshop mod, as an official add-on to Ark. The Center is the first mod to be released via the Official Mods Program.
Studio Wildcard isn’t simply adding mods to their game, they are also paying the creators for their time and effort. There’s even the possibility that Studio Wildcard will potentially hire the creators. The creator of The Center, Ben Burkart has been hired by the developers and now works at the company as a Level Designer.
Loot dinos and flaming swords await you in our latest collection of The Best ARK: Survival Evolved Mods.
Lead Designer of ARK, Jeremy Stieglitz, spoke to Kotaku about the Official Mods Program. Here’s what he had to say about the community created content: “There’s no ARK Mod EULA that gives us any inherent rights to use their work, so it’s entirely up to these authors whatever they want to do when we contact them. But of course, for a mod author this program becomes a chance to have their work featured in front of a huge audience as well as be paid for it, and continue to develop it for that eager audience.”
The Center is a fantasy-themed map that is double the size of Ark’s current map. The Center is also more varied than the original Ark map, featuring hand-drawn content that does not rely on auto-generated content. The developers at Studio Wildcard talk about this map as if it outdoes everything Ark’s map does, and they’ve made it completely free for PC and Xbox One owners of the game.
Stieglitz insists hiring content creators won’t become the norm, but simply knowing the developers will even consider hiring creators must be exciting for those in the Ark community.
