ARK: Survival Evolved is celebrating it's 3rd birthday today! It's been three whole years since we first entered into Early Access on Steam. The game has grown tremendously, from walking naked on a beach to defeating the Ultimate Lifeform! We have loved each and every moment of development, meeting you at events, hosting streams, and watching your content. Thank you so much for all the support you've shown us over the last 3 years. We are truly grateful and in celebration have something special in store for our community!

The Countdown Begins!

The countdown to our special event begins! Survivors can look forward to some epic discoveries with new content and challenges, and we'll have even more exciting news coming in the middle of the month, so stay tuned!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from the Friday the 1st of June at 3 PM EST until Monday the 4th of June 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 Maturation Rates

2x Mating and Egg Hatching Rates

2x EXP Rates

Year Three of ARK!

So many amazing things have happened in the world of ARK over the past year. With the help of our vibrant community, we have been able to achieve quite a lot! Today we're taking a look back on all we have accomplished, and taking the time to feature a handful of some of the amazing creations from the community.

ARK's third year started out with a bang with the release of the map Ragnarok in June.

Along with the map came the Griffin, a very popular and speedy flying mount that spawns only on Ragnarok.

After two years we left early access and officially released ARK in September.

After ARK's Official release, we continued to pump out content and introduced our dear friends the Otter and Phoenix!

With the official release came the first of the live action ARK trailers.

At PAX West we released the first details and trailer for our latest expansion pack, ARK: Aberration.

We attended TwitchCon a month later in October and the event was the publics first taste of ARK: Aberration.

At the beginning of November ARK: Survival Evolved became available on the Xbox One X and with it came our second live action trailer.

In November we participated once again in the Extra Life campaign raising money for sick kids charities. Together we raised $60,000 over the course of our 24 hour live stream on Twitch.

ARK: Aberration released in the middle of December, bringing an entirely new world to explore and strange creatures to battle and befriend.

The beginning of 2018 saw the first of the TLC pass conducted on five creatures: the Rex, Procoptodon, Gigantopithecus, Direwolf, and Direbear.

In March we announced ARK: Survival Evolved on Mobile, being developed by our partner War Drum Studios.

And shortly after ARK for the Nintendo Switch was announced too!

Not long after ARK Park was released, a virtual world experience of ARK developed by Snail Games.

And PixARK came next, combining a voxel base universe with the world of ARK, also developed by Snail Games.

And most recently to the world of ARK, TLC 2 was unveiled, bringing a new look and new abilities to the Argentavis, Parasaur, Raptor, Sarco, Spino, and Trike.

We have barely reached the halfway point into 2018 and we're very excited for what the next few months have in store.

Our Community Faves!

Over the past year, there have been some amazing creations done by our community. We would be here all day showcasing all of them, so here is a small collection of just a few of our favourites.

Artwork

Featherlight by runswithpencil

Ark Dodo by ClayOnOrDieTrying

Sleeping Allosaurus by Albina Diamond

Rock Drake Painting by HellaHezz

Reaper by WYF

Watercolor Yuty by Milkshake

"Abberation Basilisk Warrior" by FollyVentures

Ragnarok Offical by MisVoltz

Videos

ARK: Aberration Song | Not Afraid of the Dark | (ARK: Survival Evolved) by NerdOut

PALEO ARK Episode 2: The limits of Tyrants by UpFromTheDepths

THIS IS ABERRATION | ARK: Survival Evolved | Epic Cinematic by MAVE

ARK: Survival Evolved | Aberration | The Cinematic Experience by Jukari

ARK In A Nutshell by Neebs Gaming

ANSEL

Blue Dragon - Something new

Wolf Amaterasu - Ferocious Rex

Ego - Frost&Fire

Kana - I leave it in your hands

StateofMynd42 - Train Your Dragon

Builds

GGFizz's Ragnarok Viking Town

Submarine Underwater Base, PvE (ARK) by Sitharias!

Classic Donkey Kong Arcade (Stages 1-3) by Wolf Angelus

ARK SURVIVAL MUTATION ZOO TOUR WITH TINY HUMAN! TONS OF MUTATED DINOS! by TagBackTV

CASTLE BLACK BUILD, Game of Thrones by The Pilgrimz Project

Thousand Sunny by Valoule

Mod Showcase!

Hello everyone, Zen here. While I have not been the Mod Community Manager for this full past year, I have been a part of the modding community for it. I have watched it grow and change. The last year has seen a considerable shift in modding. The community has been evolving in their understanding of the Dev Kit, more people are learning how to take advantage of the features of UE4, and knowledge is shared more freely than ever. The Sponsored Mod Program as well has seen some significant roster changes.

We have had some longtime favorites in the program, such as Survival Plus.

Some have significantly expanded, such as Eco's decor and RP mods, or the ISO: Crystal Isles map.

We have also seen some excellent talent step from the shadows as we did with immersive taming.

I have also watched the mod authors work together to create linkages between mods. The Auction House is starting to get methods to allow other mods to change the visual theme of the mod. Dragonpunk has been pulling together mods of its creation but also building with other mods in mind and incorporating them into their hosted servers.

It's been an excellent year for modding, and I will continue to encourage the healthy and cooperative tone that the modding community has been adopting.

Thank You!

On behalf of everyone here at Studio Wildcard, thank you for joining us on this journey and for being an awesome member of our Tribe!