ARK: Survival Evolved has just had a price increase, it has more than doubled

Studio Wildcard seem to repeatedly mess up Early Access for ARK: Survival Evolved [Steam]. First with a DLC for an unfinished game that caused a bit of an uproar and now this new eye watering price.

Previously, the game set you back a reasonable ~£22.99 but it has just increased by more than double to £54.99. That's priced higher than a lot of finished AAA titles and I really am struggling to comprehend their thinking here. This is what they said about it on Twitter:

QuoteARK: Survival Evolved has increased its price on Steam to ensure retail parity for the upcoming launch.

So essentially they're using the price of their console game to push up the price of the PC version, or else people would likely go for the cheaper version on PC. It's interesting that they haven't mentioned this at all on Steam itself, likely in fear of the backlash. It wasn't even mentioned in their release date announcement, but it is mentioned in the Early Access pull-out (if anyone ever bothers to read those).

The Linux version is, to be absolutely blunt, terrible. It looks nothing like the Windows version graphically, performs very poorly for me (lots of reports of terrible performance on Windows too though) and some of it is completely broken on Linux.

I've tried reaching out to the ARK developers many times through Twitter and Emails, no reply on either. I admit Twitter isn't the best place, which is why I also emailed them multiple times over the period of a few months. I've frequented their official forum to see them seemingly ignore all Linux graphical issues. Caves on Linux are basically impossible to do due to the graphical bugs, which makes other parts of the game impossible to do as well.

Honestly, if this wasn't one our streamer's favourite games there's absolutely no way I would continue running a server for it. Our current one is quite expensive so we will be looking for a cheaper option since a few people do enjoy it still. To be clear: Unless there's a mass exodus from it, our server will continue as normal.

Due to the massive price increase along with the awful quality and support of the Linux version, I suggest this goes firmly in your nope pile. I'm sad to say that, truly I am, as I was so very excited about playing this one, but they've done nothing to earn my respect. It could be a great game, who wouldn't want to tame and ride on a massive dinosaur? There's just too many issues right now and this new price I fear will lock out a lot of potential new players.