Ark: Survival Ascended‘s planned release window for The Center DLC map has been pushed back on Feb. 24, just days before it was due to drop.
The Center was set to release at the “end of February” as the first DLC map for Ark: Survival Ascended, but after weeks of radio silence about its status, developer Studio Wildcard announced the decision to postpone the release while still planning to add the Gigantoraptor to The Island on Feb. 28.
Initially, a roadmap for Ark: Survival Ascended had The Center slated for a May 2024 release window, two months after Scorched Earth, but a change in plans then saw it moved forward to an end-of-February window while Scorched Earth was pushed back to April 1.
Just days before The Center was due to drop, however, Studio Wildcard announced in the latest Community Crunch that the plans had changed once again. The developer has not yet provided a new release date, but the one for Scorched Earth has not been changed and remains set for April 1.
While the news of the delay of the map has shaken things up, Studio Wildcard is still pushing ahead with the release of a new creature, the Gigantoraptor, on Feb. 28. Initially planned as an exclusive creature to The Center, but it will be made available on the standard Island map.
The news of the delay serves as a blow to the community, even if it hardly came as a surprise. Members of the game’s Discord server clearly expected the news, and a Reddit meme referencing Studio Wildcard’s long history of delays showed that this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.
There will be concerns about how this may affect the lifespan of Ark: Survival Ascended, however, which has been plagued with issues since launch and has seen many players leave to return to Ark: Survival Evolved. At the time of writing, SteamDB has a 24-hour peak for the newer title of 17,508, while Ark: Survival Evolved boasts 29,198 concurrent players in the same window.
