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

They were meant to release dx12 then Vulkan update for the title LONG time ago, its unknown why they have continued to delay it since they refuse to communicate with the open source community or community in general about specific issues.

I'd say their ready to shelf this title, seen this happen before were a company releases their game to retail market broken and then just moves on to another title.

Sadly this developer is going to use this as evidence why not to develop for Linux, even thought it's their fault for putting %99.9 of their team and effort into content and not actual engine saving patches and fixes along with perf updates...People may come for the content but they stay for the gameplay which largely involves engine improvements.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 7 Jul 2017 at 3:02 am UTC

Don't think I've ever seen as insane pricing with a video game before.

Heh welcome to Australia where we constantly pay insane pricing for digital content.

While that's true, there are places that will *usually* have them a little bit cheaper (£45-£50 ish)

I tried it in linux when they had a free weekend event a while back, it was trash performance wise. IC they've yet to improve it any if at all. This is related to UE4's linux support or more on their side I wonder.

Probably a bit of both. Developers always seems to have massive linux problems developing on UE4. Crossing my fingers for a good Insurgency sandstorm but a lot is working against it on linux with it being a UE title I think.

This is, what ARK thinks about any bugs they do not like:

LOL! Now they have gone completely insane xD. This game is such an overhyped garbage. I wish I could sell it.

We all know I love this game. I have also defended it at times too, I can see past most of the annoying bugs. But the fact there is only a month until they release the game that I have no faith they will ever fix the caves.

And then to slap this price tag on it. I mean to spend £55 to get half a game... IS A JOKE. And even I wouldn't recommend Linux users buying it now.

That's the point. Ark is one of my favourite game on Linux. I can live with the "bad" performances on my GTX 970 : frankly, it's really playable and smooth (not on par with the window version, though). But the caves glitches prove that the developpers really don't care, that makes the new price ridiculous for linux users...

This game is an absolutely must have! I play only this game. Now I'll try to set it with steam controller! And the prize is a fair prize, now that they finishedd it. Now they only need vulkan api to work. I love it!

I wish I could get rid of ARK or resell my Steam license to it.

You can. In the same section you get your refunds, there's an option to have the game removed permanently from your profile. Of course, you don't get money from it.

Also, according to liamdawe, £54.99 converts to about $70.92 when it's $59.99 here. MAYBE (and a big maybe, at that) they could justify this if all the versions worked just about as intended, but being broken on Linux doesn't warrant that. This is pretty ridiculous, but the DLC crap they pulled convinced me not to buy this game anyway.

.

Meanwhile, similar game "7 Days To Die" has just recently been at 60% discount in Steam Summer sale, it has just had a big update improving graphics, variety, and game balancing. Absolutely love 7D2D. Can't recommend it enough.

I'm terribly disappointed with quality of ARK on Linux and 7D2D looks awesome, but similar? The main appeal of ARK is not the survival part but dinosaurs, especially taming them.

I love the game. I dread the UE bugs that are pretty obvious in this game. This game is going hard to bump fortresscraft evolved from my top played throne, and actually only because I can let FCE just grind while I work :-).
The community is pretty toxic though. People in this thread are complaining as loud as all the salty windows users. So I take those complaints like a "people need to have something to complain over".
At that price tag I cannot really recommend it for linux users at this moment.
If the current graphical bugs are fixed, which is an UE thing, it is good enough to recommend at that price. There are other minor bugs that can be worked around.
But the joy I get from having tamed my first therozWhatsthatticklechickencalled...
The amount of joyful play I got from this game is so much more than the amount of money I invested in it. I think the price tag was less than 20 euro at that time... That's about 1 movie ticket, or 1/4th I paid for the Deus Ex port or 1/4th I paid for Planet Nomads, I think 1/3rd of the alien saga. 572h on record, and I play mostly since end 2016, although I have the game since 2015.

.

Meanwhile, similar game "7 Days To Die" has just recently been at 60% discount in Steam Summer sale, it has just had a big update improving graphics, variety, and game balancing. Absolutely love 7D2D. Can't recommend it enough.

I'm terribly disappointed with quality of ARK on Linux and 7D2D looks awesome, but similar? The main appeal of ARK is not the survival part but dinosaurs, especially taming them.

Yes, it is quite a different experience - but there are similarities - survival, crafting, base-building, foraging, etc. Ark is set it a prehistoric-style world whereas 7 Days To Die is set in a post-apocalyptic zombie-overrun world. I wrote an interesting chapter in the forum about a chunk of my recent 7D2D gaming:

[https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/2827](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/2827)


Last edited by g000h on 7 Jul 2017 at 1:15 pm UTC

If the running of the server gets too expensive then you could consider having an official gol tribe we could join on a different server, possibly official.

I wish I could get rid of ARK or resell my Steam license to it.

You can. In the same section you get your refunds, there's an option to have the game removed permanently from your profile. Of course, you don't get money from it.

Oh, I didn't know that. Not sure I want to throw money away, but....

"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."

Let's hope it as to do with this...

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/ark-survival-evolved-plans-to-use-vulkan-for-linux-this-year.8831

... And that the Linux version will get patched with this version.

I will wait for the Vulkan version review before bying it. :)

Quote
ARK: 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

@liamdawe I'm not sure if you are saying you agree with that sentiment or not but PC games should always be cheaper as the developer doesn't have to share anywhere near as much of the sale with Steam as they do the consoles which use the money to subsidise the cost of the hardware. PC gamers pay full wack on their hardware but make that back on the savings from the cost of games. And why would it matter if someone chose the PC version over the console? Its still (more) cash to the developer.

I agree the Linux port needs some proper effort put into fixing its issues. Unfortunately the longer developers leave issues on other platforms while they continue to further develop on Windows the more the issues grow and the harder it becomes to resolve them which seems to lead developers to throw their arms in the air and decree developing for Linux is near impossible. From my own experience if you develop for multi-platform throughout it adds little overhead and the end product is always more stable as the other platforms tend to expose bugs sooner that are still there on one platform but less obvious. But I digress. Fix the game Studio Wildcard! We paid for it.

Oh no, we should not say such things ;) They might feel hurt and will likely abandon their port of ARK3 :p

Haha this made my day.

To be fair, they have done some work to improve the Linux version,
It runs better then ever before.
So to say its not been bug fixed and optimazed is wrong. And it still in EA so expect them to be there untill they leave EA. It still runs badly, but in my exp it has to do with the memory leak, but its gotten better, Windows have this memory leak problem aswell.
We are missing texters, but its gotten better aswell.
Ark dont freeze in the main menu or in the loading screen.
So i dont really agree on all the hate here. Its very playble at this moment.
But the price on the other hand is insane yes, and the extra dlc they sell.


Last edited by Zelox on 7 Jul 2017 at 3:29 pm UTC

Quote
ARK: 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

@liamdawe I'm not sure if you are saying you agree with that sentiment or not but PC games should always be cheaper as the developer doesn't have to share anywhere near as much of the sale with Steam as they do the consoles which use the money to subsidise the cost of the hardware. PC gamers pay full wack on their hardware but make that back on the savings from the cost of games. And why would it matter if someone chose the PC version over the console? Its still (more) cash to the developer.

I'm not saying I agree with it, it was just my thoughts on what I feel they're doing.

I bought it during the summer sales, and sadly it didn't work with Mesa 17 so I've hesitated to ask for a refund, and well now seen the increase of the price (70€ it's completly insane !!), I keep it in my library and hope one day the dev will fix the Linux version.

The Linux version has been broken from the start and will probably be until the end of time.

I wish I could get rid of ARK or resell my Steam license to it.

In early 2016 I deleted it from my steam account.


Last edited by Aryvandaar on 7 Jul 2017 at 7:49 pm UTC

I don't know. I am pretty sure I have played other UE games that work just as well on Linux as they do on Windows, so to blame Linux UE....well we know it's the inexperience of the devs to blame. Truly, let's not mince words.

Their inexperience is also evident towards their customer base, as we have seen more than a few times in the past.

I recently got a Vive, excited to try it out on ARK...but I forgot that its VR was only for Oculus. But, they ARE putting Vive support into their upcoming Jurasicc Park ripoff??!?! Who the hell wants to walk through a theme park after actually playing with dinos??.

Ridiculous, I say. Again, displaying their affinity for backwards decisions.


As consolation, I saw Liam submitted a scathing review and I read through the subsequent spaz-attack of uninformed users that don't know that PC also == Linux or that SteamOS is Linux, or anything related to Liams complaints.

Fools and their money...
At least I am only half a fool now...

Addendum:
In trying to get Vive working with ARK (and other VR things for that matter), I decided to re-purpose one of my HDDs to Win 10 for VR. I have played ARK on Win again, and absolutely cannot go back to the Linux version. Although, I will continue my Patreon to GamingOnLinux as I still have hope for the future.


Last edited by Rolz73 on 11 Jul 2017 at 8:16 pm UTC

I noticed that they reduced the price to EUR 60,- now. So, AAA level now. Still not even close to acceptable for the Linux build though.