'Ark: Survival Evolved' is Wiping Certain Servers and Discontinuing Support to Others

Studio Wildcard has upset some Ark: Survival Evolved players by announcing that certain servers [...]

Ark Survival Evolved
(Photo: Studio Wildcard)

Studio Wildcard has upset some Ark: Survival Evolved players by announcing that certain servers will be axed soon and other older servers won't be eligible for customer support in the future.

Whether servers will be wiped or not has been a question that's received different from Wildcard in the past depending on when players asked, but it seems the definite answer now is that some servers will absolutely be wiped. "Some" actually means about one-third of the servers, according to a comment from wildcardjen on Reddit, the community lead for Wildcard.

"It is 33% of our total servers across all platforms as I mentioned in the post, with the largest fraction come from PC and the smallest from PS4," wildcardjen wrote. "In total we have 2915 servers between PC, Xbox, and PS4. I realize the number seems like a lot, but we looked at the trends for all of the servers and chose the servers based on sustained population. Currently we really do have a lot of under utilised servers."

The post reference in the comment comes from the main forums for Ark where the initial announcement was made. In the post, the list of servers that are scheduled to be shut down on Aug. 29, and players are encouraged to move all of their belongings to a server not on the lists before the shutdown date. The announcement also listed all of the servers that'll be closing down on that date, lists that you can find here for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.

Servers selected to be wiped reportedly had some extremely low player numbers in each one, sometimes around five players per server.

But those servers who are surviving the wipe will also be changed, their status being converted to something called Legacy servers. Players can still use these servers and receive updates and future content, but no customer support will be offered for these servers. Technical support is still planned to keep these servers running, but if something goes up in flames that requires a support ticket related to your individual gameplay, you're on your own.

An apology was issued to those affected at the end of the announcement, but players' responses have been less than encouraging so far on the forums, Reddit, and on Steam. Long-time players have expressed feeling of betrayal after the announcement, and the negative reviews have already started rolling in on Steam as is common with many games' negative announcements. The game already has mixed reviews across the board on Steam, but more recent reviews have already begun referencing the announcement with a resounding thumbs-down.

Ark: Survival Evolved is scheduled to fully release on Aug. 29, so take care of your server situation before then.

0comments