Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch!

Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ???????

What an intriguing discovery survivors, can you guess what this creature is?

Mod Community Announcements!

We have two important announcements for the modding community!

The first is that we are making some changes to the sponsored mod program. Previously it was more challenging to get eyes on the potential candidate projects as we would have to scour the workshop, discords, and forums; we could only see projects in their current public state, and what information the mod author chose to include. We will instead be moving to a more structured system.

Starting on September 1st, you can fill out this application to apply for sponsorship. This will help ensure that only the projects that are interested and ready for sponsorship are being brought to our attention and allow those mod authors to provide some additional information about where they are planning to take their project.

The program will also be moving to a more regular pattern, the application will be open for a period of five weeks starting in the months of January, March, May, July, and September at which point there will be slots opening in the program. Sponsorship periods will be capped at a year, but it is possible to re-apply for sponsorship after that period.

These changes will lead to a more predictable schedule of the program and give a more clear route to sponsorship for all interested mod authors.

Now for something a bit more exciting...

The ARK Modding Contest is back!!!

That's right; your eyes are not deceiving you, the ARK Modding Contest will return on September 1st! We have $28,000 in cash prizes for mod authors to compete for, and the Grand Prize is a whopping $15,000!!! So saddle up those Dev Kits, ready the mod cannons, and prepare for battle!

This will be our third modding contest, and the modding community as a whole has come a long way in terms of skill and creativity since we held the last one.

There will be a five-week entry phase followed by a two-week voting phase where players can show support for their favorite mods. Head over to ark.gg/ModContest for more information on the contest and to start preparing. This will take you to the main contest page where you can find out current information about the contest as it progresses, including hourly updates on rankings once we enter the voting phase.

The Great Migration #4: Inactive Legacy Server Removal

Once again it is time to remove some of our lower population legacy ARK servers on Xbox and PS4 from our Official legacy network. Over time the ARK population has migrated from legacy to non-legacy and in its wake left many servers with low populations for 0-1 players in a significant amount of cases.

Here is a quick breakdown on how this process works:

Taking Down Low Pop Servers

With calculations based on sustained player-count as well as the popularity of game mode, we will be removing lower population legacy servers, most of which retain a 0-1 player concurrent population. These servers will be taken offline on September 24th. Any existing server that is not considered a low pop server and is not taken down at this time will still exist on the Legacy network.

Legacy servers will continue to remain on a separate cluster from the new cluster, which means you will not be able to transfer anything between Legacy servers and the new servers.

Servers Up for Deprecation

Below is a complete list of the LEGACY servers that will be deprecated come September 24th. You have from now until then to move your belongings onto a server not present on this list. Please click one of the links below. They are separated by platform.

How To Move Servers

If you are unfamiliar with the process, you are able to upload your items, creatures, and player through the Obelisk terminal, supply drops, as well as the Tek Transmitter. Survivors are advised to use Cross-ARK immediately to relocate their belongings onto a server that is not included in our take-down list above.

Server Saves of Deleted Servers

We will make the save files available as soon as we can. We will host the PC files which anyone can download and then you are welcome to re-host the save file for your own use. We'll include a link to where you can download server saves in this post when they are available. Nitrado will also be able to provide the saves for use on Nitrado servers for console, as they have done in the past.

You can see a list of our currently available depreciated official servers on this webpage: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/server-backups/

Community Livestream #7 This Thursday!

This Thursday August 30th the community team will be doing another biweekly livestream!

During these livestreams Zen Rowe, Chris, and Jen bring you ARK news, celebrate modding, and the community as a whole every other week. We mix it up between playing ARK, showing off mods, and showing off your community creations for all to see. Survivors are invited to join us in the chat (and sometimes even in-game) to play and talk with the community team.

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, August the 30th at 1pm EST! We hope to see you there

Fanart of the Week!

We would like to give a special shoutout this week to artist Djaymasi for their amazing fanmade Koolasuchus Dossier!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 31st of August at 1 PM EST until Monday the 3rd of September at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates

2x Taming Rates

2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark

Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark

Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark

Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark

Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark

Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110

Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,

Studio Wildcard