ARK: Survival Evolved updated with the latest 'Unreal Rendering code', still terrible on Linux

If we want ark to be fixed, I think we must give ark the victories they get intended or not. That way they are less likely to see us as a mistake, too much support for too few buyers. Maybe it is too late, or maybe not. I hope it is not, because I believe this game can be fixed, and if it gets fixed, then it will be quite awesome.

I don't agree with you on this one. This game is two weeks away from final release with a triple A price tag. This is completely ridiculous for state of the Linux version of the game. Like it or not, until (if?) the game is finally ported to Vulkan and has it's many problems fixed, the game will be in alpha state for Linux users. In my opinion, Liam is correctly informing potential buyers of the game about what they're potentially getting into.

I think this article should have waited until we had done a bit more research because as it is now, it is misleading.

No, it's the exact experience for me, it's not misleading in any way. I've tested all settings, tried resetting them and cleared out any cache as well. I did plenty of tests, all resulting in the same thing.

I'm sorry, I meant the title, and the overall tone in the article was misleading for the state of ark on linux in general. Not that your experience was misleading. The experience is an important part of the state, but it is not the full picture, and I thought your article was meant to show the whole picture. I cannot tell if I read it wrong, or if it is written in a way that is easy to misread.

The article and title as far as I am concerned is accurate.

I don't agree that the state of ark on linux is terrible. It is graphically not too great and was terrible before this fix, but the cave issue seems to be fixed in the renderer, if it doesn't use files generated by old version. At this point the water bug is an inconvenience, but it can mostly be worked around by swimming under water when you do water stuff. It is still not good, but it is more an inconvenience that shouldn't be there than a game breaking bug. The cave issue was more game breaking, but I think the new render is able to do it well, if it doesn't use old data that confuses it. I think a clean install would work, e.g. delete all configs and restore the default ones via steam, but I don't have enough data to say for sure.

I am sorry for all the heat in my comments.

The Linux version of ARK is still inferior in every single way to the Windows version.

As stated I've tried everything and my game still looks like that.

Would we accept this level from Aspyr? Feral? Virtual Programming? Ethan Lee?

Double standards are not a good look. Accepting a game that's been broken for a long time and still is in a number of ways (some people can't even run it now) is not good.

Articles like this might discourage further fixes because we don't compliment them for what they actually have done, and claim they are not fixing anything. We should complain about what is wrong, but not claim what they have fixed is still broken.

What have they done exactly? Ignore bugs for many months, pull in some Unreal Engine code which gave some people an FPS boost. I won't compliment them, since they're still obviously not putting any effort into the Linux version. This is very clear.

If we want ark to be fixed, I think we must give ark the victories they get intended or not. That way they are less likely to see us as a mistake, too much support for too few buyers. Maybe it is too late, or maybe not. I hope it is not, because I believe this game can be fixed, and if it gets fixed, then it will be quite awesome.

So we should give them a break because after how many years/months they decided to pull in some fresh Unreal Engine code, which has fixed some issues for some people.

Nope. They still clearly ignore the Linux version for the most part.

We are talking about a £49.99 game.

ARK again. Sigh. The only game in my library I actually regret that I have bought it. Can't the developers just drop Linux if they have no intention of supporting it the right way?

ARK again. Sigh. The only game in my library I actually regret that I have bought it. Can't the developers just drop Linux if they have no intention of supporting it the right way?

And miss out on swindling Linux gamers out of £50 a time?

I didn't try the new patch of yesterday, but I play it since the game was ported on linux. It worked very well until the 261 patch. Then it began the grey water issue and the sky became to be too much lighten.
The windows gamers had for many long time big cave lags, and with my linux client I never had this problem.
On windows my friends had for very long time crash issues, I had crashes for one week only.
Ok, dx graphic has since 261 patch better effects than opengl, but I played the game for years almost flawlessly.
I say, let's have a little pacience, this game is for me (except the Zelda saga and Seiken Densetsu) the best game I ever played.


Last edited by evergreen on 17 Aug 2017 at 11:25 am UTC

At last, the cave glitches have been fixed (hurrah!), but the water textures are now missing (i guess that the total number of bugs must be constant :)).

The loading times have also been improved and are now reasonnably fast on my set-up (i5+SSD) : around 30s to play, the first time you launch the game (and only a few seconds the second time).

There are many games I regret buying, but ark isn't one of them. Most games for linux these days, especially AAA titles, are not fun for me and I regret buying some of them. It doesn't mean the games are bad, they just aren't for me. The same way ARK is a great game for those who don't get too put off by the graphical glitches, and/or are lucky and get fewer of them. The game can still be quite fun, even with the glitches, on a friendly server.

ARK on linux has come a long way. During the last year performance has increased and the glitches has decreased quite a lot. The only regression I experienced was the non-transparent ugly ocean. Because I have played a lot, I keep seeing areas that I remember was either bad, but now is quite good, or areas that were plain and boring that are now beautiful even on medium graphics.

I will not recommend it over $20 at this point, and only for people who are willing to tweak settings and overlook/workaround graphical issues. ARK is a great game that have issues that may or may not be gamebreaking, depending on point of view. The limited vision I experienced in caves before this patch is quite a lot more game-breaking on a hostile PVP server than a friendly server.

I much rather have an enjoyable game with broken graphics, than a game that isn't enjoyable with great graphics.

I am curious. For those who say the caves work fine for them, what NVIDIA driver version are you running? I have a feeling it's a driver fix, not a game fix. It would certainly help explain that even after wiping everything possible, that I still experience it.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 17 Aug 2017 at 11:31 am UTC

I'm sorry, I meant the title, and the overall tone in the article was misleading for the state of ark on linux in general.

Nope, the title and the article are pretty appropriate. The state of ARK on linux is abominable.

If we want ark to be fixed, I think we must give ark the victories they get intended or not. That way they are less likely to see us as a mistake, too much support for too few buyers. Maybe it is too late, or maybe not. I hope it is not, because I believe this game can be fixed, and if it gets fixed, then it will be quite awesome.

What victories?

• input for non-US keyboards: broken, never got fixed


• caves: unplayable due to graphics glitches, never got fixed


• water rendering: never got fixed, just in various states of brokenness


• performance: abominable, no improvement ever on linux, only got worse over time


• countless other graphics glitches: never fixed, just varied in the frequency they got triggered

And that's only a small excerpt from the linux-only issues.
I kinda started laughing when they announced the stable release date. With all the bugs the let accumulate affecting even the basic game mechanics in favor of dishing out new buggy features I'm expecting they'll just declare it finished at some point and move on.

I have a feeling it's a driver fix, not a game fix.

Very likely, i've just installed the latest nvidia driver (according to smxi, 384.59).


Last edited by Narvarth on 17 Aug 2017 at 11:34 am UTC

I am curious. For those who say the caves work fine for them, what NVIDIA driver version are you running? I have a feeling it's a driver fix, not a game fix. It would certainly help explain that even after wiping everything possible, that I still experience it.

The 384.59.

I run arch not upgraded for 9 days. I tried ark before and after the new patch, and it was definitely the patch that changed it from not working to working. I checked out caves about a week ago without upgrading after, and they didn't work then. It is possible that the new renderer code only is better with the right driver though.

I have nvidia 384.59


Last edited by Ketil on 17 Aug 2017 at 11:38 am UTC

Nope, the title and the article are pretty appropriate. The state of ARK on linux is abominable.

For some it works great, for others not so great. It is correct to say that linux users have very different experience with the game. I still think this article implies that the patch fixed nothing at all for any linux users, while it clearly did for me and a few others.

input for non-US keyboards: broken, never got fixed

This is true. I run us keyboard layout, and ark was actually the software that made me switch. This is not a fix, it is a workaround, so we should continue complaining about this. Even on us keyboard layout the numpad doesn't work, so if we want shortcut for taming groups(quick select of e.g. all rexes), we have to edit the ini files manually to reassign them to some other keybinding.

caves: unplayable due to graphics glitches, never got fixed

Caves has been partially fixed. They have been fixed for me and a few others, but not for everyone. If we find out why, then it might be easier for them to fix it.

water rendering: never got fixed, just in various states of brokenness

This is true, we should keep complaining about this.

performance: abominable, no improvement ever on linux, only got worse over time

This is not true. I have had lots of improvements the last year. From risking the game to crash my computer when in a large base on heavily customized graphics settings, it runs quite smooth on medium preset now. It is quite possible that the fixes don't work for everyone though, and again, it would be nice to identify why they don't work.

countless other graphics glitches: never fixed, just varied in the frequency they got triggered

Here is a list of my experiences:

• Black rain: fixed


• Farming: fixed


• Black water in caves: fixed


• Sparkling water in cave: not fixed, looks like partially intended from random youtube video


• Black cloud when using pickaxe/hatchet on rock: Fixed


• Black cloud under walking dino: fixed


• Black waterfall: Mostly fixed. Still a few black particles left, but they are not many


• Black snow in the arctic(the falling snow, not the ground texture): not fixed

Most glitches I have left are quite minor, and I can only see them if I look for them. On the other hand the ocean surface bug is not a minor one, and is hard to overlook.

I am curious, does everyone with radeon have regressions? Does anyone on radeon experience any improvement from this patch?

So, there have been improvements for some players.
For some players, there has been no improvement.
It seems that overall there is still a big proportion of users for which the quality is unacceptable.

From this I'd say "still terrible on linux" is pretty much accurate.

I really want to believe in Ark, but there's a strong impression that any improvement was rather accidental than intentional (added to their zero communication about linux problems).

Honest question- do they even have anyone doing any linux work, or do they just have a calendar reminder to press 'export for linux' in UE4 when it's time?

Ok I have to admit I was wrong, the game DOES start for me, but the DLC The Centre is the part that crashes the game, I've just tried it again with the same result, Ragnarok, The Island & Procedural maps work, the water looks horrible & the giant light eating black boulders are offputting to say the least.

I still hold this game in a positive light. Not defending it. It does have a lot bugs and glitches with the Linux client. That being said it still the most played game in my library. I still have hope its all going to work out.


Last edited by Nor Mantis on 18 Aug 2017 at 4:06 am UTC

Yesterday I played about 3 hours with my son on Ark. We have both (me on pc and my son on his laptop, both latest Nvidia 384.59 drivers) no problems, except the annoying grey water and me some red light shadows on the right screen side.
But I have to say the graphic has been improved, not so much as on windows, but I saw a nicer Sky and better textures on long distances. It's worth to try it.

I think this article should have waited until we had done a bit more research because as it is now, it is misleading.

No, it's the exact experience for me, it's not misleading in any way. I've tested all settings, tried resetting them and cleared out any cache as well. I did plenty of tests, all resulting in the same thing.

Liam, I do think he is right in that you as a reporter should take a more moderate stance. Yes, I see you as a reporter trying to be as objective as possible.
It doesn't take away that their communication is very very bad, but that's towards everyone. And in the salty environment they are in, I can't blame them:
"I got an update, but there is no changelog, what a bunch of loosers",
"The changelog has been updated, but I can't download it, what a bunch of loosers", this being only a small thing of which they never can get right, and the wording has been made a bit less offending.
We don't want a "the witcher 2" debacle. As such, please use words like: "I am slightly dissappointed". As a matter of fact: ark is *the* game we can have a reversed effect, as the comments are so toxic I want to just completely filter out those that have not learned that word respect. Unfortunately it's impossible.

Anyway, it is good to hear the caves are fixed if we follow Ketils steps. When I read about the updated engine, I suspected we need to do something, usually that's noted in the changelog though. Despite those glitches, this game has me hooked in a fun way, that I was even considering removing it and all data from my computer. And now my new base is at liams server so I can't even delete that 8-D.

If I feel a game is terrible, I'm sorry, but I won't sugar-coat it. Saying something is terrible isn't being hostile, it's giving my honest opinion on it. There's a large difference between calling developers names and using a normal adjective to describe the state of something.

If it was cheaper, I would probably be a little more understanding, but again, this is a £49.99 game. It's not cheap, it's about to release soon and their support of the Linux version has been awful.

Believe me, I want to play it, I personally purchased myself a copy of it. When they fix Linux issues properly and give us a tiny bit more support, I will happily change my stance.

I have to compare this to Rust, which recently had an issue where on Linux no players or animals could be seen unless they were close to you. The developers acknowledged it and fixed it within 1-2 days. That's reasonable, and you would have probably noticed how I've had a complete turn-around on my thoughts of the developers and the game, because they deserve it for actually supporting Linux and fixing issues.