Studio Wildcard has announced that the free-to-play version ofArk: Survival Evolved’s arena-based spinoffSurvival of the Fittestis being discontinued.
Ark: Survival Evolvedlaunched to somewhat unexpected success in June of last year, pulling in more thanone million early access salesin short order. Developer Studio Wildcard has made a lot of changes to the game since last summer, but the game’s community has continued to grow and is now at 5.5 million players.
One way Studio Wildcard attempted to reach new players was through the launch ofArk: Survival of the Fittest, a free,Hunger Games-like arena version of the game that released on PC earlier this year. The dev even had plans tobring the spin-off to PlayStation 4but there werewarning signsjust a couple weeks ago that some changes might be on the way.
Now, Studio Wildcard has explained in aSteam forum postthat going forward,Survival of the Fittestwill still exist but is being brought back inside theArk: Survival Evolvedpackage. In other words, if a player hasn’t already signed up forSurvival of the Fittest, the only way to get it now is to buy the main game.
“As we look to the future ofSotF, we came to a decision:Survival of the Fittestwill be brought back internally as part of theArk: Survival Evolvedpackage,” Studio Wildcard wrote.“For technical functionality it will still exist as its own application, and everyone who has thus-far played the game will continue to be able to play it without having to own Ark: Survival Evolved, but going forward it will be considered part of the Ark: Survival Evolved product group.”
Studio Wildcard went on to explain that there were essentially two reasons for making this move. One, a new development kit for modders has been released and the company didn’t want to put any restrictions on content or licensing for those who don’t own the main game.
“We wanted to ensure that modders would have freedom when working with the kit to create the mods that they wanted to see inSotF,“the developer wrote. “This was more important to us than any other reason, and to accomplish this, we had to bringSotFback into theSurvival Evolvedproduct.”
The second reason for the move is that the studio had no desire to become a free-to-play developer. Studio Wildcard talked about the fact that even “free-to-play” games still cost resources to run and that ifSotFwould have stayed free, the developer would have had to take time away from development of the main game in order to figure out a monetization strategy, as well as to deal with other typical hassles that come with free-to-play development.
“We just aren’t cut out for free to play mechanics,” the forum post reads. “WithSotFbeing part ofARK: Survival Evolved, it’ll be able to draw fromSurvival Evolvedresource pool directly, and enable us to continue operating the title.”
While some gamers who might have been looking forward to the PlayStation 4 release ofSotFmay be disappointed, it’s actually kind of refreshing to see a developer reject a free-to-play business model in favor of a premium experience in today’s industry. While maintaining a free version of the game may have brought in some new players, Studio Wildcard’s ability to now put all of its focus on making the best premium game possible across the board should benefit the community in the long run. It’s a business model that seems to have worked out well for some other games recently,most notably Blizzard’sOverwatch.
Ark: Survival Evolvedis currently in Early Access. It is scheduled for full release on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, OS X and Linux before the end of 2016.
