On Tuesday, Snail Games released a massive content update for the Steam version of Ark: Survival Evolved, titled Ark: Aquatica. Billed as a special 10-year anniversary DLC for the game, this new update promised a host of content, including new biomes, creatures, engrams, and improved underwater gameplay.
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However, Ark players are up in arms after reports that the update caused numerous issues, including breaking mods that many players have invested significant time into. In the wake of the update, concurrent player numbers suffered one of the largest sudden drops in years. In response, Snail Games has already issued an apology for the rollout.
“Hello everyone,” began a Steam update after Aquatica’s release. “We wanted to make this announcement today to apologize for the issues currently affecting both Ark: Survival Evolved and the Ark: Aquatica DLC.”
The Ark team offered players a way to revert their Ark: Survival Evolved client back to a pre-Aquatica state and promised that fixes for mods would be seen “in the coming days.”
Players experiencing issues with the new update and DLC will need to navigate to Ark: Survival Evolved in their Steam library and right-click. Next, players need to click properties and select the “Betas” option. Under Beta participation, there should be an option to choose “preaquatica.”
They asked players to report issues by posting on the Aquatica Discord and Bug Reports forum, while also taking the time to reiterate the release discount available with the new DLC.
“If you haven’t purchased Aquatica yet, you can now launch the pre-Aquatica version to play with your existing mods,” said the announcement. “Take advantage of the introductory Aquatica discount in the meantime — you can buy it now and play later once fixes have been made.”
Although the breaking of mods was a huge callout among Ark players, it was far from the only issue. Taking to online forums, players complained about the update reverting game settings, causing performance issues, and breaking servers. These issues seemed to be present even for those who played unmodded.
“Leave it to snail games to make an update so disastrous there’s now an official option to revert it,” wrote Reddit user Fesatreddit.
The update quickly racked up an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating on Steam. As of this writing, the DLC has over 600 reviews and stands at a 17% review score. Critical Ark: Survival Evolved players are fiercely dedicated to this version of the game and resent the developers’ meddling with things when another Ark game is already in development.
Released into Early Access in 2023, Ark: Survival Ascended had a middling reception among fans for constant DLC releases and poor optimization. By contrast, Ark: Survival Evolved was seen as the refuge for longtime fans who didn’t want to deal with the new direction of the series until this latest Aquatica DLC.
The Aquatica update was embroiled in controversy all the way up to its release. Back in March, fans accused a now-deleted gameplay trailer of containing instances of AI generation. In the wake of the backlash, the series’ original development team, Studio Wildcard, made comments on social media distancing themselves from ARK: Aquatica.
While this initial release of Ark: Aquatica has been a disappointment for some players, if the promised fixes are delivered quickly, there is a chance the perception can rebound. However, a lot of damage has already been done in the minds of many Ark players.
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