Ark: Survival Ascended developers have apologized for a “rocky few days” but remain adamant the release of Scorched Earth will not be impacted.
A major patch was issued by Studio Wildcard on March 11 in preparation for Scorched Earth’s release, the first new map to be introduced to Ark: Survival Ascended, but resulted in several bugs for players.
Players reported a significant increase in both client and server crashes following the new Ark: Survival Ascended update, but in an announcement on the official forums, Studio Wildcard said it had patched “as many as they can” on the server side and “some client-side” bugs on PC.
Crashes are said to have been “caused by technical changes” made to the core game in preparation for Scorched Earth, and in the long run, these changes would “make remastering content smoother” and provide modders with more flexibility when creating their own content.
Despite the fresh problems, Studio Wildcard insists that despite a “rocky few days” the release of Scorched Earth “at the end of the month” (April 1 per the roadmap that was released) would not be impacted.
Ark: Survival Ascended players have endured plenty of setbacks, the most recent of which was the delay to The Center DLC. Initially set to release before the end of February, weeks of radio silence were finally followed by an announcement that surprised nobody, with the release of The Center DLC being pushed back indefinitely.
The Gigantoraptor, a creature due to release alongside the new map as an exclusive on The Center, was then released as a mod pack for the standard Island map and can now be tamed. There is no word on whether a new creature will replace the Gigantoraptor on The Center.
As for Scorched Earth, the imminent release is the first major update to Ark: Survival Ascended but faces a difficult task in luring players back to the game. Per data from SteamDB, the 24-hour peak for Ark: Survival Ascended was 14,711 compared to 26,480 in its predecessor, Ark: Survival Evolved.
