July 7, 2015 - Studio Wildcard is partnering with Epic Games to bring the full power of Unreal Engine 4 tools and development resources to the ARK: Survival Evolved modding community with one of the first custom mod editors. ARK: Survival Evolved, the open-world dinosaur survival game from Studio Wildcard, has achieved wild success in just 30 days of Early Access on Steam, already selling more than 1 million copies.

“ARK provides a brilliantly creative universe for modding, and a wealth of beautiful environments and dinosaur content to build upon,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic. “Many of us here began in the mod community, so we’re grateful to see Studio Wildcard open up their creative work to a new generation of programmers, artists, and designers.”

Players who have purchased ARK can begin modding immediately! Follow the "How To Mod" tutorial to get started, then join the ARK community, participate in the Unreal Engine ARK Modding forum, and find content in the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Modders can then share their creations with the ARK player community using Steam Workshop.

“As we’ve opened up the world of ARK to everyone, we've been seriously on the edge of our seats with anticipation. The amazing gameplay ideas lighting up the forum conversations can be turned into reality right away,” said Jesse Rapczak, Studio Wildcard co-founder and co-creative director. “The UE4 mod tools that we're providing are phenomenal, and we can’t wait to see the limitless creativity of our fans come to life in fantastic new ways.”

Epic and Wildcard will come together on Twitch.tv/UnrealEngine on Thursday, July 9 at 11 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. ET to walk the community through the ARK modding process. More details are available here.

Since their mainstream origin in early 3D games such as Quake and Unreal, mods have been a central driver of the game industry. Modding heritage can be found in major franchises such as Counter-Strike, genres such as the MOBA, and professional game studios throughout the industry. A thriving mod community can act as a force-multiplier on a game, often going far beyond the original developer’s creation both in size and scope.

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ARK: Survival Evolved takes on the survival genre with a unique blend of emergent multiplayer cooperation and competition. Players must hunt, harvest, craft, research technology, and build shelters to protect against punishing climate conditions, dangerous wildlife, and potential enemies. Tame and ride one of 70 prehistoric beasts, including gargantuan creatures on a scale never before seen in video games! Fly a Pterodactyl squadron over the snow-capped mountains, race through the deep jungle with a pack of trained Raptors, tromp through a fortified enemy base along a convoy of gigantic Brontosaurus, or chase down prey on the back of a raging T-Rex.

Developed by Studio Wildcard, in conjunction with Instinct Games, ARK: Survival Evolved is available on Steam Early Access now and will launch in June 2016 on PlayStation®4 with Project Morpheus support, Xbox One via the ID@Xbox program, and Steam, including Oculus Rift VR support and a thorough integration of Steam community features such as Steam Economy and Steam Workshop.

To join our growing tribe of ARK survivors, journey over to Steam for the detailed feature list, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, subscribe to us on YouTube, visit the Website at www.playark.com and watch us tame and train leviathan dinosaurs on Twitch.tv.

ABOUT UNREAL ENGINE

Developed by Epic Games, the award-winning Unreal Engine is known for bringing high-fidelity experiences to PC, console, mobile, Web and VR. Unreal Engine accelerates the creation of games, applications, simulations, visualizations and cinematic content. Download Unreal Engine for free at unrealengine.com, and follow @UnrealEngine for updates.

ABOUT STUDIO WILDCARD

Studio Wildcard was co-founded in 2014 by Jesse Rapczak, former Technical Art Director at Microsoft Game Studios, with the mission of bringing AAA quality to ambitious indie productions designed for core gamers. With 12 years of industry experience across multiple independent and studio-backed titles, Jesse has teamed up with other veteran developers for a Seattle-based development studio that also includes distributed team members across multiple continents. Wherever talented, driven developers may reside, Studio Wildcard intends to seek out and work with them!