Studio Wildcard has admitted they’re having trouble with Unreal Engine 5 and needs more time to develop.

Ark: Survival Ascended will be a remastered version of Ark: Survival Evolved on Epic Games’ new engine. It was first announced that it would be part of a fifty-dollar bundle, including an Ark II pre-order. The public did not receive this move well, so the developers have changed their approach: they have removed Ark II from the bundle but will still receive several DLCs for Ark: Survival Ascended for free when released. However, they will have to pay $60 instead of $50. This move didn’t seem entirely fair either, but let’s leave it at that because twists and turns are still coming.

In their latest newsletter, Studio Wildcard announced that Ark: Survival Ascended would be released in October instead of late August: “We’ve found it challenging working with Unreal Engine 5.2, but at the same time, it is exhilarating. We’re discovering new ways each day to push the technology to the next level; combined with the work needed to support a fully cross-platform-moddable game ecosystem on consoles and PC, it’s clear that we’ll need a bit more time.”

The game will have The Island add-on by default, but Scorched Earth will come later (scheduled for December), so it will only be among the other DLC in post-launch updates. Ragnarok and Aberration will arrive in the first quarter of 2024 and the other maps after that. Pricing has also been changed: at launch, Ark: Survival Ascended will be $40, and then Studio Wildcard will charge $45 for it during the early access period (until around the end of 2024). The delay also means that Ark: Survival Evolved servers will stay up longer, with a closing date of September 30 instead of August 31.

Ark II, also coming towards the end of 2024, will be attacking with Vin Diesel…

Source: PCGamer