Remaking and optimizing some classic games seems to be the main theme of the game circle in the past two years. CDPR's The Witcher 3 Next Generation, Capcom's Resident Evil 4RE, Naughty Dog's Last of Us RE all illustrate this. And this month, Studio Wildcard also brought new news about ARK: Survival Evolution, but the results were eye-popping.
The classic sandbox game, released in 2015, is currently preparing for a next-gen release, as Studio Wildcard decided to remake the original game because it wanted to familiarize itself with Unreal Engine 5 before releasing the sequel.
"The remastered version will greatly improve the visuals, and we can expect updates to technical features such as dynamic water, interactive plants, cross-platform multiplayer and game mods, as well as updates to the game interface, such as new minimaps, new third-person perspectives, ping systems and more." Studio Wildcard said.
The good news for this situation is that players will be able to play ARK: Survival Evolved with more refined graphics and better engines; The bad news is that next-gen updates are chargeable. Not only that, but the original server will also be disabled, which means that players will have to upgrade the next generation to continue playing.
Currently, Studio Wildcard says it costs $59.99 to upgrade the next-gen version, which is the common price that manufacturers currently price for a triple-A game. However, most people obviously don't want to pay twice for a game, so ARK Survival Evolved has been brushed with thousands of bad reviews in the past week. (Total measurement is 5800)
As the situation intensified, Studio Wildcard reacted quickly, explaining the details in the hope that players would understand.
According to Studio Wildcard's original idea, it was intended to sell the next-gen version and Ark 2 as a bundle, which was equivalent to saving players money. But given that the exact release date of Ark 2 has not yet been determined (originally planned for release in 2023, it has now been skipped to 2024), so it may be more difficult to get players to pay for a game in advance.
As a result, Studio Wildcard sold the next-generation upgrade separately for $59.99. As for why the original server was shut down, it was due to maintenance costs.
Because of the next-generation ARK: Survival Evolution with a new engine, many gameplay content has changed. And some of the original data and mods cannot be supported in the next-generation version. As a last resort, Studio Wildcard decided to abandon the original, which was the official server.
These contents were released by Studio Wildcard in the form of an official announcement. However, the effect of changing the attitude of players is quite limited.
After all, what really makes players question is not the original server being shut down, but the forced upgrade of the next-gen version. The original price of 138 yuan to start the game, 8 years after the release of the game has to spend 59.99 US dollars (about 412 yuan) to play, which is somewhat unacceptable.
At present, the incident is still fermenting, and if Studio Wildcard's subsequent price setting for the next generation of "ARK: Survival Evolution" does not change, the market share of private servers may change. Given that the next-gen version will be released in August, there is not much time left for official consideration.
So what do you think about this?