ARK: Survival Evolved players on PC and Xbox One who play on what Studio Wildcard calls “Cross ARK Cluster servers” got a surprise Friday evening. The developer wiped these special server groups after a dose of cheating since they launched.

Studio Wildcard launched the Cross ARK Cluster servers a few weeks back. These servers allow players to move freely between servers hosting The Island, The Center, and Scorched Earth. This includes both items and tamed dinosaurs. The catch is these character, item, and tame animal transfers only happen between a set of three official cluster servers.

The ability to transfer characters between official ARK: Survival Evolved servers was introduced with the Scorched Earth expansions. However, players were only allowed to transfer naked characters from The Island and The Center to Scorched Earth. Transfer from Scorched Earth to the other two maps do allow both items and tamed animals to be moved, however.

[Image by Studio Wildcard]

The introduction of Cross ARK Cluster servers was an experiment by Studio Wildcard to see what else could be done in ARK: Survival Evolved. Like all experiments, you run into some failures on the road to success. This necessitated the wiping of all characters and progress as described by Community Manager Jat.

“Since their launch we have been tackling many issues that have affected them, critical issues being related to item and dino duplicating through the transfer system. We now believe we are in a place where the system is much more stable and the duping issues have been resolved. Following the latest set of fixes, we have decided that this Friday, October 14th … we will be wiping all Cross ARK Clusters on the Official ARK PC and Xbox Network. “We understand that some of you may be upset by this decision and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused however we believe as the servers were only online for a short period of time, a wipe is the best solution to providing the best gameplay experience for our survivors, following the issues that were once present. Were it not for the proactive reports from our player base we wouldn’t have been able to catch these as quickly and get them resolved.”

This wipe was originally scheduled to take place at midnight ET / 9 p.m. PT. However, Studio Wildcard decided to wipe the following server clusters about four hours early so they could be included in the Evolution Event scheduled for this weekend.

Xbox Cross ARK Cluster 1

NA-XboxCrossArkCluster1-TheIsland

NA-XboxCrossArkCluster1-TheCenter

NA-XboxCrossArkCluster1-ScorchedEarth

Xbox Cross ARK Cluster 2

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EU-XboxCrossArkCluster2-TheCenter

EU-XboxCrossArkCluster2-ScorchedEarth

PC Cross ARK Cluster 1

NA-CrossARKCluster1-Scorched Earth

NA-CrossARKCluster1-TheCenter

NA-CrossARKCluster1-TheIsland

PC The Hundred Cross ARK 2

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EU-TheHundredCrossArk2-TheCenter

EU-TheHundredCrossArk2-ScorchedEarth

PC The Hundred Cross ARK 3

EU-XboxTheHundredCrossArk3-TheIsland

EU-XboxTheHundredCrossArk3-TheCenter

EU-XboxTheHundredCrossArk3-ScorchedEarth

[Image by Studio Wildcard]

This is not the first time ARK: Survival Evolved official servers have been wiped. Studio Wildcard made the decision to wipe the servers not long after the game was released to Early Access on Steam. Ironically, it was for much the same reason with players taking advantage of duplication exploits. The studio still plans to avoid wiping official servers if it can, as long as those servers have an active player base.

This weekend’s Evolution Event is still scheduled to kick off at midnight ET / 9 p.m. PT. This will bring 2x harvesting, tame, and experience gain rates to official servers for ARK: Survival Evolved on both the PC and Xbox One.

The ARK: Survival Evolved v248 update for the PC is still targeting a Tuesday, October 18, release following the conclusion of the Evolution Event. As previously covered, this adds the ability to create procedurally-generated maps to the game. Four new dinosaurs are also scheduled to arrive along with the ability to wield weapons while riding dinos, plus other improvements. The Xbox One will receive this update sometime later.

The Halloween event, Fear Evolved 2, is then scheduled to launch on October 29. This adds the DodoWyvern to Scorched Earth, brings the DodoRex back for The Island and The Center maps, and allows players to turn into vampires or werewolves.

[Featured Image by Studio Wildcard]