It’s not often you hear developers admit the technology upon which their games are built isn’t up to the job, but that’s exactly what Jeremy Stieglitz, co-founder of Ark maker Studio Wildcard did during a recent livestream.
Speaking during Studio Wildcard's Extra Life Charity Stream on Twitch, Stieglitz addressed the elephant in the room: the awful performance of the recently released Ark: Survival Ascended.
“The servers are ass. They run like ass. And their stability is ass. We need to improve it. It’s going to be improved,” he said.
Twitch chat reacted with a mix of shock and admiration. “Wow truth,” one viewer said. “Facts,” said another. “Finally someone that gets it,” said a Twitch user. “The guy knows it lol,” said another. "Did somebody really say that lmao," said a bemused viewer. "Damn legend," said an impressed ZestyWumpaFruit.
Ark: Survival Ascended is Studio Wildcard’s Unreal Engine 5 remake of the original Ark: Survival Evolved. (If you're playing, check out IGN's comprehensive Ark: Survival Ascended guide). While its Steam launch was declared successful, with Snail, Inc., owner of developer Studio Wildcard, announcing the game sold over 600,000 copies on Valve's platform in the two weeks following launch, players soon ran into performance issues. The game currently has a ‘mixed’ Steam user review rating of 58%.
Most of the negative reviews revolve around performance issues, with players complaining about crashes, problems connecting to servers, and bugs.
Last month, Studio Wildcard pulled the Windows PC version from PVP crossplay amid a vociferous backlash over cheating. Ark: Survival Ascended came out on Windows PC and Xbox on November 21, and since then players called on Studio Wildcard to remove the Windows PC version from PVP crossplay due to the use of cheats such as speedhacks and the ability to kill through walls.
With the community in uproar over cheating, Studio Wildcard said it had made the “difficult” decision to temporarily disable Windows clients from joining official crossplay PVP servers while it worked with Microsoft and anti-cheat software BattleEye to add “robust” anticheat measures for the Windows version of the game. “We apologise to our Windows players but we feel this is the best course of action for the health of the game,” Studio Wildcard added.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
