It's been a joy to watch the community participate in TSOTF matches this past week! We've seen several nail-biting matches and clever uses of the new mechanics that TSOTF provides. It is a memorable experience for us to watch these high-intensity matches play out on a grand scale. Whod imagine wed see little dilos, monkeys, and small creatures being mind-controlled at end-game!? We'd also like to give a nod to the ARK content creation community for keeping our screens full of nonstop entertainment.

Since the original launch on Friday, Dec 23rd, balance changes have been made to several creatures including Thylacoleo, Rhino, Triceratops, Carcharodontosaurus, and Dragon. Changes have also been made to C4, fire/flame weapons, and bosses in the game. Several quality-of-life improvements have been added such as keybinds, total match time remaining on the HUD, and a confirmation prompt for converting to tokens. A parachute has been added as a lootable item and some optimizations have been made to the mini map, compass, on-screen text, and in-world POI UI/HUDs.

The patch notes thread contains the latest changes and updates for TSOTF.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/407530/ARK_The_Survival_Of_The_Fittest/

We are excited to announce that ARK: The Survival of the Fittest prototype is now available on Steam!



ARK: The Survival of the Fittest is a prototype spin-off of ARK: Survival Evolved, pitting up to 60 combatants against each other in a fast-paced, action-packed struggle for survival, where players are ultimately pushed into an epic final showdown leading their Dinosaur Armies into battle. ARK TSOTF is the only Battle Royale that focuses on large-scale creature-army confrontations, combined with a unique Real Time Strategy overlay. By using tactics and strategy to assemble a fighting-force of historys most powerful primeval creatures, only one tribe will survive!

Form your tribe and fight in the ultimate battle of Dino Survival! Designed for intense competition and fast-paced dino action, survivors begin their match in a TEK-imbued sky lobby to tribe up. When the battle begins, theyll fly towards an island aboard a giant Quetzal before ejecting and gliding towards their chosen starting area. Do competitors dash for drops and fight it out? Do they run into the jungle and hide, search for creatures to tame, and rapidly build their Dino Army, or do they die to a pack of curious Compys? Make use of the birds-eye-view mode, which allows you more effectively Command-&-Control your army of dinosaurs, directly possess individual upgradeable creatures, and issue commands to your team as the ultimate strategist. This unique RTS-style experience is available in-life and also after-death! Avoid the continually shrinking and dynamic ring of death that forces contestants ever closer together over time and become the last tribe standing. The hunt is on!

[previewyoutube=6YJL1zw_0qI;full]Trailer[/previewyoutube]

Please note: this version is currently only a prototype to test out the new gameplay and features it is not yet a fully-featured competitive game. Nevertheless, we encourage all survivors to play and provide us feedback to help further develop and grow TSOTF!

While the core goal of The Survival of the Fittest remains the same, weve gone back to the drawing board and introduced a significant number of technical/quality of life/balance changes to the game mode that differs from ARK: Survival Evolved and the original version of Survival of the Fittest. These changes aim to make the experience more streamlined and accessible, eliminating the complex aspects of crafting & the steep learning curve, and empowering players to quickly form their Dino Armies and get to the creature-action faster.

• ARK re-designed from the ground up, focusing on fast-paced gameplay and intense combat around large-scale creature battles
  
• A whopping 88 dinosaurs and creatures at launch!
  
• A simplified version of The Island from ARK: Survival Evolved
  
• Solo and Tribe based game modes
  
• Overhaul UI/UX Experience to communicate only what is essential and gamepad friendly.
  
• Inventory Management has been completely removed for a simpler and quicker gameplay experience.
  
• Looting-focused design - Harvesting has been removed and replaced with tier-based supply crates where items are rewarded to all members of your tribe or killing dinos for your own additional resources.
  
• Weapons and armor have been modified and rebalanced for the ultimate fast pace experience and uncomplicated player progression.
  
• New timing system: kill creatures for tokens and then spend those tokens on taming new wilds or stealing downed tames from your enemies!
  
• Commander Mode. A birds-eye-view mode that can be entered at any time of the game, allowing you to control your army of dinosaurs (RTS style) more effectively, directly possess individual creatures within your arsenal, and issue commands to your team as the ultimate strategist (including an ally-driven fog of war). Thus after a player has died, they can still participate in the match as a commander and continue to control and possess the teams Dinosaur they can continue to play and benefit their team! A team is only fully defeated once they have had all their Players AND their Dinosaurs destroyed.
  
• Dino Tier System - Dinos are rewarded for their kills with EXP to advance them to a new tier providing them with fixed statistical benefits and eliminating dino-level RNG.
  
• Dynamic ring of death unique to each round enabling emergent gameplay and unpredictable advantages
  
• An intelligent Pinging System to help communicate within teams
  
• Custom-Painted War Banners enable Tribes to show off their team spirit on Flags across their army of Dinosaurs!
  
• Summon bosses of the ARK to strengthen your arsenal in this ultimate Dino Army experience
  
• A custom live-orchestrated soundtrack was written by award-winning composer Gareth Coker of Ori and the Blind Forest and ARK: The Animated Series.
  

ARK: Survival Of The Fittest is Now Available on Steam!

ARK: Survival of the Fittest is a Multiplayer Online Survival Arena (MOSA) game that pits as many as 72 combatants against one another in the struggle for survival in a harsh, changing environment packed with deadly creatures, Evolution Events, and other players.

The ARK: Survival of the Fittest All Stars plus Naughty & Nice matches will take place from 11 am EST to 3 pm EST tomorrow, Saturday the 17th December 2016!

The final games will be shout-casted by typeForced! We invite all ARK fans to come watch the epic battles at that time on our Twitch channel:

https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark

To those competing: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors!

The ARK: Survival of the Fittest All Stars plus Naughty & Nice matches will take place from 11 am EST to 3 pm EST tomorrow, Saturday the 17th December 2016!

The final games will be shout-casted by typeForced! We invite all ARK fans to come watch the epic battles at that time on our Twitch channel:

https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark

To those competing: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors!

ARK: Survival of the Fittest initially started as the original Total Conversion for ARK: Survival Evolved. It’s a game mode which puts places in a battle arena where they fight to the death. Since it’s inception in August 2015, it has undergone a lot of changes.

However, we are officially announce the hiatus of ARK: Survival of the Fittest. This means that there will be a halt in active development for the game mode whilst we consider our options for the game’s long-term direction. This also means that Survivor League will no longer run, for now. Please keep in mind that this may not be permanent, and there is active discussion surrounding the game mode’s future, including the possibility of a console port and development continuing, but for now we wanted to inform you that we would not be working on it plus no longer supporting it through competitive tournaments. The Official servers will remain online for the time being.

We understand that this may come as a disappointment to a number of you, Survival of the Fittest was a project we do love, but unfortunately, for now, it’s just not possible for us to scale up work on the title while also providing the necessary attention to ARK: Survival Evolved. However, we would like to give it a proper send-off: this winter we will be hosting two special matches to celebrate the game mode, as well as all who played it.

On Saturday the 17th of December at 11AM EST we would like to cordially invite the best SotF players to take part in an “All-Stars” 4-player-tribe game. The players will be invited based on their previous placements and accolades in Survivor League. This will be a standard 4-player match with the same settings as the October League, except the match timer will be scaled for 1.5 hours. All participants will be provided with a 20$ Steam Gift card, and the winning tribe will each receive a bonus 100$ Steam Gift card for their success! Following that match, we would like to host a final ~200-player Naughty vs Nice (to take place on The Island SotF Map) where the winning tribe’s players will receive a 50$ Steam Gift card (all hundred of them!).

In January, we will also release the Scorched Earth SotF source to the Survival of the Fittest Development Kit. The map environment itself is complete, however enterprising modders would need to add the dino-spawns, as well as make any other changes that they themselves deem necessary. We will also ensure all Survivors who have won over 200 SotF games in a set competitive game mode receive their Bionic Giga skin in ARK: Survival Evolved v253. Sorry, it took so long - we’re still waiting for our functionality from Valve but have managed to create our own workaround!

We’ll keep you informed should plans on SotF change next year, as we are still sourcing potential ways to give the game a substantial development outlook.

ARK: Survival of the Fittest initially started as the original Total Conversion for ARK: Survival Evolved. Its a game mode which puts places in a battle arena where they fight to the death. Since its inception in August 2015, it has undergone a lot of changes.

However, we are officially announce the hiatus of ARK: Survival of the Fittest. This means that there will be a halt in active development for the game mode whilst we consider our options for the games long-term direction. This also means that Survivor League will no longer run, for now. Please keep in mind that this may not be permanent, and there is active discussion surrounding the game modes future, including the possibility of a console port and development continuing, but for now we wanted to inform you that we would not be working on it plus no longer supporting it through competitive tournaments. The Official servers will remain online for the time being.

We understand that this may come as a disappointment to a number of you, Survival of the Fittest was a project we do love, but unfortunately, for now, its just not possible for us to scale up work on the title while also providing the necessary attention to ARK: Survival Evolved. However, we would like to give it a proper send-off: this winter we will be hosting two special matches to celebrate the game mode, as well as all who played it.

On Saturday the 17th of December at 11AM EST we would like to cordially invite the best SotF players to take part in an All-Stars 4-player-tribe game. The players will be invited based on their previous placements and accolades in Survivor League. This will be a standard 4-player match with the same settings as the October League, except the match timer will be scaled for 1.5 hours. All participants will be provided with a 20$ Steam Gift card, and the winning tribe will each receive a bonus 100$ Steam Gift card for their success! Following that match, we would like to host a final ~200-player Naughty vs Nice (to take place on The Island SotF Map) where the winning tribes players will receive a 50$ Steam Gift card (all hundred of them!).

In January, we will also release the Scorched Earth SotF source to the Survival of the Fittest Development Kit. The map environment itself is complete, however enterprising modders would need to add the dino-spawns, as well as make any other changes that they themselves deem necessary. We will also ensure all Survivors who have won over 200 SotF games in a set competitive game mode receive their Bionic Giga skin in ARK: Survival Evolved v253. Sorry, it took so long - were still waiting for our functionality from Valve but have managed to create our own workaround!

Well keep you informed should plans on SotF change next year, as we are still sourcing potential ways to give the game a substantial development outlook.

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/



Last Man Standing Mod 5-Man Tournament!

Last weekend was also the Last Man Standing Tournament! The tournament was run using a Survival of the Fittest mod created by community member Katti, hosted by Davnell, and had a prize pool sponsored by Studio Wildcard.

Different than the Survivor League, Last Man Standing uses tribes of 5 and will consist of three 1.5 hour matches where points are awarded for tribe survival placement (10 points for 1st, descending by 1 point for each successive position, 0 points for 11th place and below). The highest points accumulated at the end of the three matches was crowned the winner!

You can subscribe to the mod here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=774369391
If you missed the games, you can check them out here:

https://www.twitch.tv/davnell/v/93930349



Prize Pool:
1st place: 2500 USD (5x500 USD)
2nd Place: 1250 USD (5x250 USD)
3rd Place: 750 USD (5x150 USD)
4th Place: 500 USD Steam gift cards (5x100 USD cards)
5th Place: Scorched Earth keys (x5)

Congratulations to the winners, and all of the participants! It was an epic weekend filled with battles and fun. We will strive to continue supporting our mod community in the future so that great creations like this can receive the notoriety and playtime they deserve.

Until next time, Survivors!

Much love,
Wildcard Jen and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/



Last Man Standing Mod 5-Man Tournament!

Last weekend was also the Last Man Standing Tournament! The tournament was run using a Survival of the Fittest mod created by community member Katti, hosted by Davnell, and had a prize pool sponsored by Studio Wildcard.

Different than the Survivor League, Last Man Standing uses tribes of 5 and will consist of three 1.5 hour matches where points are awarded for tribe survival placement (10 points for 1st, descending by 1 point for each successive position, 0 points for 11th place and below). The highest points accumulated at the end of the three matches was crowned the winner!

You can subscribe to the mod here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=774369391
If you missed the games, you can check them out here:

https://www.twitch.tv/davnell/v/93930349



Prize Pool:
1st place: 2500 USD (5x500 USD)
2nd Place: 1250 USD (5x250 USD)
3rd Place: 750 USD (5x150 USD)
4th Place: 500 USD Steam gift cards (5x100 USD cards)
5th Place: Scorched Earth keys (x5)

Congratulations to the winners, and all of the participants! It was an epic weekend filled with battles and fun. We will strive to continue supporting our mod community in the future so that great creations like this can receive the notoriety and playtime they deserve.

Until next time, Survivors!

Much love,
Wildcard Jen and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

September Survivor League Championship!

The ARK: Survival of the Fittest September Survivor League Championship matches will take place from 11 am EST to 2 pm EST on Saturday, 8th of October, with a bounty of more than $65,000 in prizes to the winners!

The Survivors who have qualified for the event are listed here:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/

The championship games will be shout casted by typeForced! We invite all ARK fans, and the newly curious, to come watch the epic battles at that time on our Twitch channel:

https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark

To those competing: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors! And may the fittest survivor be victorious!

Hope we have an awesome Championship and get to see some great games!



Last Man Standing Mod 5-Man Tournament!

Studio Wildcard is also sponsoring a second tournament this weekend. The tournament will be run using a Survival of the Fittest mod created by community member Katti.

The event will be streamed on Twitch on Sunday, October 9th 2016 at 11am EST by Davnell: https://www.twitch.tv/davnell

Different than the Survivor League, Last Man Standing uses tribes of 5 and will consist of three 1.5 hour matches where points are awarded for tribe survival placement (10 points for 1st, descending by 1 point for each successive position, 0 points for 11th place and below). The highest points accumulated points at the end of the three matches wins!

You can subscribe to the mod here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=774369391
Prize Pool:
1st place: 2500 USD (5x500 USD)
2nd Place: 1250 USD (5x250 USD)
3rd Place: 750 USD (5x150 USD)
4th Place: 500 USD Steam gift cards (5x100 USD cards)
5th Place: Scorched Earth keys (x5)

It's going to be a fun-filled weekend, so be sure to tune in Saturday and Sunday to see these tournaments play out.

Much love,
Wildcard Jen and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

September Survivor League Championship!

The ARK: Survival of the Fittest September Survivor League Championship matches will take place from 11 am EST to 2 pm EST on Saturday, 8th of October, with a bounty of more than $65,000 in prizes to the winners!

The Survivors who have qualified for the event are listed here:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/

The championship games will be shout casted by typeForced! We invite all ARK fans, and the newly curious, to come watch the epic battles at that time on our Twitch channel:

https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark

To those competing: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors! And may the fittest survivor be victorious!

Hope we have an awesome Championship and get to see some great games!



Last Man Standing Mod 5-Man Tournament!

Studio Wildcard is also sponsoring a second tournament this weekend. The tournament will be run using a Survival of the Fittest mod created by community member Katti.

The event will be streamed on Twitch on Sunday, October 9th 2016 at 11am EST by Davnell: https://www.twitch.tv/davnell

Different than the Survivor League, Last Man Standing uses tribes of 5 and will consist of three 1.5 hour matches where points are awarded for tribe survival placement (10 points for 1st, descending by 1 point for each successive position, 0 points for 11th place and below). The highest points accumulated points at the end of the three matches wins!

You can subscribe to the mod here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=774369391
Prize Pool:
1st place: 2500 USD (5x500 USD)
2nd Place: 1250 USD (5x250 USD)
3rd Place: 750 USD (5x150 USD)
4th Place: 500 USD Steam gift cards (5x100 USD cards)
5th Place: Scorched Earth keys (x5)

It's going to be a fun-filled weekend, so be sure to tune in Saturday and Sunday to see these tournaments play out.

Much love,
Wildcard Jen and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

Naughty or Nice

The special SotF Gamemode known as Naughty or Nice will be making its official return as a new Total Conversion on Saturday September the 24th at 11AM EST!

We will be hosting a special charity event where survivors will be put to the test in an all out 100 versus 100 battle over the course of 2 and a half hours. The survivors invited to attend the event will feature some of the best SotF players around, winners of previous events, the finalists who competed at ChinaJoy, as well as your favourite streamers, content creators and developers!

Over the coming days, invited players will be contacted and receive a steam invite to a special group, join the group as that's what we'll be using to communicate with you during the showmatch. The invite will be coming from:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/SoTFLeague

So be sure to keep your eyes open on those steam invites!

The winning team will be awarded 100$ Steam Gift Cards and an equal donation will also be made to Charity. Itll be a truly special elimination battle, so be sure to tune into the live event at www.twitch.tv/survivetheark casted by none other than typeForced! ;)

Naughty or Nice

The special SotF Gamemode known as Naughty or Nice will be making its official return as a new Total Conversion on Saturday September the 24th at 11AM EST!

We will be hosting a special charity event where survivors will be put to the test in an all out 100 versus 100 battle over the course of 2 and a half hours. The survivors invited to attend the event will feature some of the best SotF players around, winners of previous events, the finalists who competed at ChinaJoy, as well as your favourite streamers, content creators and developers!

Over the coming days, invited players will be contacted and receive a steam invite to a special group, join the group as that's what we'll be using to communicate with you during the showmatch. The invite will be coming from:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/SoTFLeague

So be sure to keep your eyes open on those steam invites!

The winning team will be awarded 100$ Steam Gift Cards and an equal donation will also be made to Charity. It’ll be a truly special elimination battle, so be sure to tune into the live event at www.twitch.tv/survivetheark casted by none other than typeForced! ;)

Be sure to look out for a message from myself to get the prize-process underway ;). And as for the next league finals? The timer has begun, good luck guys!

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/



Naughty or Nice

A little update: Naughty or Nice, will be making its official return as a new Total Conversion on Saturday September the 24th at 11AM EST!

For those not in the know, we will be hosting a special charity event where survivors will be put to the test in an all out 100 versus 100 battle over the course of 2 and a half hours. The survivors invited to attend the event will feature some of the best SotF players around, winners of previous events, the finalists who competed at ChinaJoy, as well as your favourite streamers, content creators and developers! Keep an eye out for those invites!

The winning team will be awarded 100$ Steam Gift Cards and an equal donation will also be made to Charity. It’ll be a truly special elimination battle, so be sure to tune into the live event at www.twitch.tv/survivetheark casted by none other than typeForced! ;)

Until next time,

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

Be sure to look out for a message from myself to get the prize-process underway ;). And as for the next league finals? The timer has begun, good luck guys!

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/



Naughty or Nice

A little update: Naughty or Nice, will be making its official return as a new Total Conversion on Saturday September the 24th at 11AM EST!

For those not in the know, we will be hosting a special charity event where survivors will be put to the test in an all out 100 versus 100 battle over the course of 2 and a half hours. The survivors invited to attend the event will feature some of the best SotF players around, winners of previous events, the finalists who competed at ChinaJoy, as well as your favourite streamers, content creators and developers! Keep an eye out for those invites!

The winning team will be awarded 100$ Steam Gift Cards and an equal donation will also be made to Charity. Itll be a truly special elimination battle, so be sure to tune into the live event at www.twitch.tv/survivetheark casted by none other than typeForced! ;)

Until next time,

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

Naughty or Nice

The special SotF Gamemode known as Naughty or Nice will be making its official return as a new Total Conversion on Saturday September the 17th at 11AM EST!

We will be hosting a special charity event where survivors will be put to the test in an all out 100 versus 100 battle over the course of 2 and a half hours. The survivors invited to attend the event will feature some of the best SotF players around, winners of previous events, the finalists who competed at ChinaJoy, as well as your favourite streamers, content creators and developers!

The winning team will be awarded 100$ Steam Gift Cards and an equal donation will also be made to Charity. It’ll be a truly special elimination battle, so be sure to tune into the live event at www.twitch.tv/survivetheark casted by none other than typeForced! ;)



I'll be in touch early next week to start getting prizes underway, as well as for any previous winners who've yet to receive their prize, now that ChinaJoy has been completed we'll be able to tackle this a lot quicker.

We can't wait to see how the August Championship games end up, as well as of course the epic return of Naughty or Nice!

Until next time,

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

Hello Survivors!

On July 24th 2015, we announced a competitive-battle mod for ARK, called “Survival of the Fittest”!



A lot has changed since that announcement, what first started out as an internal mod side-project, grew into a publicly released Total Conversion, and eventually became its own standalone client - ARK: SotF has seen plenty of changes over the past year and today we’re going to discuss the future of this game mode.

The 2016 Summer Cup

We've just posted our recap on the Summer Cup which you can check out here:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/407530/announcements/detail/868452059603124218
SoTF and its future!



As we look to the future of SotF, we came to a decision: Survival of the Fittest will be brought back internally as part of the ARK: Survival Evolved package. For technical functionality it will still exist as its own application, and everyone who has thus-far played the game will continue to be able to play it without having to own ARK: Survival Evolved, but going forward it will be considered part of the ARK: Survival Evolved product group. There are some key reasons behind this decision, which we believe is the best option for the success of Survival of the Fittest and we’ll go through those points as follows:

Development Kit

The release of the Development Kit is the main reason for bringing back SotF internally. We have been pondering for a while how to release the kit without any restrictions on content and licensing, allowing SotF modders to freely take all the content from Survival Evolved as they wish. We wanted to ensure that modders would have freedom when working with the kit to create the mods that they wanted to see in SotF. This was more important to us than any other reason, and to accomplish this, we had to bring SotF back into the Survival Evolved product. We do not want to place any restrictions on you, this community has provided a lot of feedback in regards to SotF and there are a number of you who have expressed a desire to work on the game mode itself and take it to a new place. We wanted to ensure that you would be able to meet those desires and make SotF into the game you want to see, no limits. Furthermore, we’ll be kicking off a large-scale SotF Mod Contest shortly to help give the SotF creative community a boost to get out there and make cool stuff, stay tuned for details on that! You can download the SotF Development Kit here ( http://arkfiles.com/sotf/ARKDevKitSotF_v177.2.zip -- 50 GB! ) and start uploading your SotF Content to Steam Workshop right now! Feel free to take any and all content you want from Survival Evolved, let’s see some new Dinos in SotF! Tutorials and info on how to create content (Maps, Mods, Map Extensions, and Total Conversions) are available here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?70-ARK-Survival-Evolved

No Free To Play Monetisation

When a game like SotF is made free to play, there are still expenses - this can range from development work, server costs, running of tournaments, prizes and of course the opportunity cost. To ensure that SotF would remain a success and a sound choice, Wildcard would have had to put a lot of resources and time into learning how to become a ‘free to play’ developer. We would have had to learn how to monetize a free game, notoriously through the use of in-app purchases such as skins and other cosmetics. Ultimately, it’s clear this is not who we are, we like to make games, and to make the gameplay fun. We don’t know much about monetization, and quite frankly we aren’t interested in hiring an economics team to take over that process, it is much more in our and your best interest for Wildcard to solely focus on the development of a game. We just aren’t cut out for free to play mechanics. With SotF being part of ARK: Survival Evolved, it’ll be able to draw from Survival Evolved resource pool directly, and enable us to continue operating the title.

Survivor League



It’s coming back! We’re going to prepare the epic 100v100 ‘Naughty or Nice’ battle-mode as a SotF “Total Conversion”, incorporating all the latest updates made to SotF - it will be open-source so modders can take it further if they wish. We’re hoping to release the TC by the end of August and host a gamers’ Charity Match sometime in September, to which all the qualifying members of August’s Survivors League are invited to participate! We had a lot of good feedback about our last, and there has been a lot of request for when the game mode will be making its reappearance, just to let you know - we’re on it guys! And yes, the developers will compete, and get our butts kicked ;)

TLDR

Right now here’s what we are certain of:

• The SotF Development Kit will be released today, without restrictions due to this change and this means that there will be no restrictions on modders.
  
  
• For this to happen without content license restrictions (take whatever you want from Survival Evolved and put it into SotF!), we’re bringing back SotF Internally into the main-game’s product group again, and it will no longer be a separate “Free to Play” title.
  
  
• We will continue to support and encourage modders through their developing endeavors to see where they can take SotF. Details on the first SotF Mod Contest will be announced soon!
  
  
• Survival of the Fittest will be maintained as a playable game mode internally. If there are issues with the game, we will resolve them. If we’re able to make performance updates due to optimisation work done on the main game, SotF will also receive them. Major content upgrades to SotF will be pending further expansion of the team, and the development kit will continue be updated with content from ARK: Survival Evolved (which can be directly copied into SotF by modders).
  
  
• Console development of SotF (PS4 and Xbox One) will be placed on hold so we can take a step back and see how these changes pan out in the long term, without making any hasty decisions about ARK: SotF.
  
  
• The 100v100 ‘Naughty or Nice’ event is making a comeback in September!
  
  
• Summer Cup was a lot of fun - thank you to everyone who attended and all the fans who watched it live from China! Hope you enjoyed it too!
  
  
• Stay tuned for longer-term announcements about future regional tournaments.
  

The past week, 31 Survivors (one unfortunately was not able to go!) flew out to compete in the first ever official SotF LAN Tournament. The teams which qualified were Kitty Cats, Kappa Pride, Beliebers, Get Out The Way, Los Bandoleros, PsychoSocial, The Rejects, Grabuge, plus local Chinese teams D.K and ZG. The ten teams took to the Island and battled it out across an epic three-game series.

The first game was an intense match filled with a ton of action, with teams proving that they were capable of performing on a LAN environment. KappaPride’s Deki really showed off his fantastic gunslingers which a large number of solo kills using the pistol. The game became very close at the end with Turbo pulling off some clutch moves to try to even up the odds. The game ended with the Chinese teams securing the top two positions and ZG taking it on most kills.

The second game proved just to be as exciting with a ton of blood being spilled. The Survivor League teams wanted to send a message that they were here to play for real, with the winners of the previous game immediately lost two players in an early skirmish. As the game went on it was clear that there were a number of tribes who could take the match. Kitty Cats were successful in taming the Broodmother and used it to massive effectiveness instantly as they thwarted the incoming attack from Beliebers! Ultimately it ended in a large 5-way tie with Kitty Cats taking the match with the most kills.

As we entered the final game, the judges tallied the scores and the Cup was anyone's to take. Tied for first place was local team ZG alongside European powerhouse, Kitty Cats. Tied for second place was local team D.K alongside the seasoned SotF tribe KappaPride, with third place currently being held by Beliebers (who were playing with 3 players!). During the early game it had looked like a lot of mistakes were occurring which led to some real up-hill battles. Perhaps it was a case of nerves, or just some bad luck. D.K Captain Ke Le was sending a message to the other tribes as he single-handedly took on, with a little help from his team, an entire tribe of 4 and came out victorious.

As we approached the platform and the final 6 - with all top 5 tribes still in the game, persevering to take the win. Of the 5 tribes, Beliebers was first to be eliminated - they put up a great fight but were taken out by ZG. Ralph was the last member alive from KappaPride and held up valiantly, playing the last moments of his life on foot before he was eaten by a Spinosaurus from the ZG tribe. The remaining tribes at this point were ZG and D.K both with 4 members, and Kitty Cats with 2. It seemed apparent that ZG and D.K were playing it safe and avoiding confrontation, as the two most powerful tribes it makes strategic sense to clear out the others first. Wilson from Kitty Cats was taken out, as team captain MOLNMAN had finished off the Get Out The Way tribe, but was inevitably killed himself. The game ended in a two-way tie between D.K and ZG both with four remaining members. At the end the judges tallied the scores and the kills and the results are as below:

3rd Place: D.K


2nd Place: Kitty Cats


1st Place: ZG


If you haven’t had a chance to catch the games yet, we recommend you do - you can check the highlight streams over at www.twitch.tv/survivetheark

The tournament was a lot of fun to run, and it was awesome seeing all the strategies and skill demonstrated by our survivors. There were a lot of tense moments too with some players turning up the heat and really making a name for themselves on an international stage. Put simply: we got to witness some epic gameplay and unforgettable moments. We also learned a lot about the high-level game during these few days, as well as lot about hosting LAN matches and we’re very thankful to those of you who tuned into to support our survivors, the survivors for attending and competing, as well as those of you who were at the event itself whether as member of the team, supporting your friends, or watching the game in person.

Thank you Survivors, we could not do it without you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRt5Q7EeSpQ
All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team.

We’re excited to announce that the finals for the Summer Cup will be taking place today!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zNRDoNAq9w

The top 10 qualifying international teams -- eight from Europe and North America, two from China -- have flown in for the tournament taking place on the expo floor of ChinaJoy 2016. The three one-hour matches will be shoutcasted by popular streamer typeForced and Studio Wildcard Jen starting at 6:30 pm PST, Thursday, July 28, 2016.

The top Western Tribes and their team members, competing at ChinaJoy 2016, include:

Tribe: Kitty Cats
Members: MOLNMAN, Bertman, Wilson Wilson, and Uhivra

Tribe: KappaPride
Members: Vinz, Deki, PedroSaltana, and p3ngu

Tribe: BELIEBERS
Members: Lunde, pbot, piespace, and Turbo

Tribe: GET OUT THE WAY
Members: Vayne, Jason TaTane, Sk0_-, and ReDz

Tribe: Los Bandoleros
Members: DeyLo, Nes, VelociREKTor, and antihero

Tribe: PsychoSocial
Members: SonnyDreamX3, PSYCHOxnc, Hanseatenpower, and sgibba

Tribe: The Rejects
Members: Bobster, Frumm, tva04, and hashtagjj

Tribe: Grabuge
Members: Wormy, Chyminliv, Alexette, and dantuan

All matches will be streamed on the ARK Twitch channel, www.twitch.tv/survivetheark at the following times, with the Award Ceremony immediately following the last match:

Round 1 – 6:30 pm PST, Thursday, July 28

Round 2 – 9:30 pm PST, Thursday, July 28

Round 3 – 11:30 pm PST Thursday, July 28 (ending no later than 3 am PST, Friday, July 29)

ARK: Survival Evolved Steam Free Weekend and Epic 50% Sale!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110

From Thursday through Sunday, July 28-31, 2016, ARK: Survival Evolved, SotF's Sister Game is hosting a Free Weekend on Steam to celebrate the release of Primitive+ and The Center's major update, where all survivors can invite their friends to start to tame, train, breed and ride Dinosaurs in this open-world action-adventure survival game. ARK: Survival Evolved also is on sale for Steam players at 50% off (retail $29.99) from Thursday through Wednesday, July 28 - August 3, 2016.

Hello Survivors!

We are excited to announce the commencement of July’s Survivor League! The league will run until the end of July as usual, where the top contenders will be invited to take part in the Championship Matches on August 6!

We will not be resetting player scores for this game as we believe the recent changes made to SotF do not require a reset, there have been no changes made to the structure of the league, nor heavy gameplay changes. After seeing the league play out for the first few months, we are happy to have the score from last month continue to the next. In the future, there may be cases where we reset the score as major gameplay/mechanics changes are implemented, but this will not be one of those times.

Over the past few days, you may have noticed that SotF has gone through a number of changes affecting performance have been made and we’re hoping this will lead to an improvement in the quality of games - both on your end and on ours! You guys should notice significant performance in the servers, from the merging of the code base

Good luck to all contestants who hope to compete in the upcoming Survivor League Championship for July!

You can check out where you place on the current rankings at:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/



Development Kit and Future Updates!

To keep you guys in the loop, unfortunately the development kit will not be releasing today, but it will be coming soon this month. We ran into a conceptual challenge late into the final-check before release and for this reason must delay it a bit further. However don’t worry, you guys will hear some important announcements coming soon regarding SotF as well as be able to get your hands on the Developers Kit!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team

We’d like to wish them a huge congratulations to the winners and thank everyone for participating in the league. We’ll be reaching out to the winners over the coming days to collect the information required to get your prizes sent out to you! Look out for contact made by Jat!



And following this event, today [Sunday] we hosted our Semi Final match for the Summer Cup! The teams were invited to compete in today's game through a rigorous two-month process where the highest-scoring survivor league tribes were tallied and brought together to battle it out for the opportunity to fly to Shanghai, China and compete in the Summer Cup and ChinaJoy!

The game was very entertaining with a lot of action right from the get go, the Broodmother even made an appearance! Definitely a must watch if you haven’t so far ;)

https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark/v/75999611

And withour further ado, let’s get to the winners and those who have qualified from today’s game;

First and foremost a huge congratulations to;



For their outstanding performance in today's Semi Final game and clinching the first spot!

We’d also like to wish a congratulations to the remaining 7 teams for securing their qualification for the Summer Cup’s Finals in Shanghai!

Tribe: KappaPride
Members: Vinz, Deki, PedroSaltana, and Rezy

Tribe: BELIEBERS
Members: lunde, pbot, piespace, and Fmentz

Tribe: GET OUT THE WAY
Members: Vayne, Jason TaTane, Sk0_-, and ReDz

Tribe: e-LEMON-ators
Members: DeyLo, Nes, VelociREKTor, and antihero

Tribe: PsychoSocial
Members: SonnyDreamX3, PSYCHOxnc, Hanseatenpower, and sgibba

Tribe: The Rejects
Members: Flex, Bobster, Frumm, and TVA04

Tribe: Grabuge
Members: patpanik84, Chyminliv, Alexette, and dantuan

And if you’d like to check out the full action report, you can do so here.

We look forward to seeing you guys compete in the finals! May fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors! And may the fittest survivor be victorious! We’ll be reaching out to the qualified tribes over the coming days to collect the information required, so look out for contact made by Jat!

We’d also like to give a huge shout-out to typeForced for streaming and casting both events this weekend, you did a fantastic job and put on a great show alongside the players! Stay tuned for more details regarding the Summer Cup Finals and how you can tune in to support your favourite tribes!

And just as a reminder! During the Steam summer sale, our sister game ARK: Survival Evolved is 45% off its retail price! Making it the best deal ever on this dinosaur experience.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team

We’re excited to announce the second set of teams (from the June 2016 Survivor League qualifiers) that were able to successfully qualify for the Summer Cup Semi Final Match! The winning teams from the Final Match this Sunday (July 4th) will be invited to be flown out to the ARK Survival of the Fittest Season One: Summer Cup in Shanghai, China at ChinaJoy 2016 and get the chance to compete for over $40,000!

To read more details about the Summer Cup just check out: http://playark.com/summercup/

And without further ado, the teams which have successfully qualified for the Semi Finals are:

Tribe: GET OUT THE WAY
Members: Vayne, Jason TaTane, Sk0_-, and ReDz

Tribe: The Killer Inc is Back
Members: X Hunter, DentilZha, Razorbread, and Tazzpro

Tribe: #BeChampions
Members: FluffyB, EnemaOfTheStates, Swordfish, and MPG Resi

Tribe: VictoriousSecret
Members: StalkinU, Rene, IceBox, and Mathrandril

Tribe: HailKappa
Members: DdayDrasin, Messy, Toast, and Voxsic

Tribe: Chinese Storytellers
Members: Narco Polo, RealNapalm, AlethaUK, and mistercrime

Tribe: e-LEMON-ators
Members: DeyLo, Nes, VelociREKTor, and antihero

Tribe: Holy Church of RNGNESS
Members: Rockette, Soprano, Sols, and D e l u x e

Tribe: Grabuge
Members: patpanik84, Chyminliv, Alexette, and dantuan

Tribe: S.PLH
Members: Pepper, JEPPE, Grypee, and Haydnz

These were the teams who had the collected highest points following June's Survivor League Qualifier Rankings! We’d like to congratulate them on their valiant play and look forward to them participating in the upcoming match on Sunday!

The invited teams will be sent a special group invite and friends request on Steam from http://steamcommunity.com/id/SoTFLeague/ so make sure you accept the invites from that account.

Good luck to all Survivors out there and let’s see who gets crowned the Season One Summer Cup Champions of ARK: Survival of the Fittest! Don't forget to join July 2-3 at 11AMEST on our Twitch www.twitch.tv/survivetheark to watch the competitions!

Much love,
Wildcard Jen and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team

Season One: Summer Cup Semi Final!

The Semi Final match for the Season One: Summer Cup will also be taking place!

We had announced the first set of invited teams previously at:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/407530/announcements/detail/848181659416229481
The last remaining invites will be sent out to teams following the end of June’s Survivor League in order for them to take place in the special 2-hour long Semi Final match which is scheduled to start at:

Sunday, July the 3rd at 11AM EST

The winning teams from the Semi Final Match will be invited to be flown out to the ARK Survival of the Fittest Season One: Summer Cup in Shanghai, China at ChinaJoy 2016 and get the chance to compete for over $40,000!

To read more details about the Summer Cup just check out: http://playark.com/summercup/

Both the Summer Cup Semi Finals and Survivor League Championship match will be streamed on twitch.tv/survivetheark and shoutcasted by SotF expert, typeForced! We invite all ARK fans, and the newly curious, to come watch the epic battles and the chance to compete for thousands of dollars and an invite to the Summer Cup finals in China!

To those competing for a qualification spot: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors! And may the fittest survivor be victorious!

And just as a reminder! During the Steam summer sale, our sister game ARK: Survival Evolved is 45% off its retail price! Making it the best deal ever on this dinosaur experience.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team

Hello Survivors!

Season One: Summer Cup Semi Final!

We’re excited to tell you that the date for the Semi Final match for the Season One: Summer Cup will take place on:

Sunday, July the 3rd at 11AM EST

The winning teams from the Semi Final Match will be invited to be flown out to the ARK Survival of the Fittest Season One: Summer Cup in Shanghai, China at ChinaJoy 2016 and get the chance to compete for over $40,000!

This 4-Survivor Tribe match will differ to regular matches as the time of game length will be extended to two hours, not including sudden death. We will be posting an updated ring-of-death timer soon so players will be able to practice ahead of time for the upcoming match.

To read more details about the Summer Cup just check out: http://playark.com/summercup/

We’d also like to send a congratulations to the first set of teams that were able to successfully qualify for the match, wish them luck in competing and we look forward to seeing them battle it out for a place in the finals. These were the teams who had the collected highest points following May’s Survivor League Qualifier Rankings!

And without further ado, the teams which have successfully qualified for the Semi Finals are:

Tribe: Barside Brawlers
Members: Fuzee, Bardave, The Tyrant, and Spur

Tribe: Kitty Cats
Members: MOLNMAN, HANNIBAL, Bertman, and Wilson Wilson

Tribe: BELIEBERS
Members: lunde, pbot, piespace, and Fmentz

Tribe: KappaPride
Members: Vinz, Deki, PedroSaltana, and Rezy

Tribe: Carnivore Drop
Members: D a r k r e l l, KireGame, 9e9e9, and adriancarballo

Tribe: Arma Poulet
Members: xutv, Blad, Warlock, and Oni

Tribe: The Rejects
Members: Flex, Bobster, Frumm, and TVA04

Tribe: YGD
Members: Bilbobagins, Wiener_Schnitzel, #JJ#, and Iratus.exe

Tribe: Silky Smooth
Members: Celine, Uhivra, Claus, Jigsaw

Tribe: PsychoSocial
Members: SonnyDreamX3, PSYCHOxnc, Hanseatenpower, and sgibba

Don’t worry for those of you who haven’t yet qualified, you still have another chance by playing through the 4v4 Survivor League ladder during June (visible in real-time here: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/ )! The scores were pretty close all together, and we’ll be hoping to invite another 10 teams to the match.

The invited teams will be set a special group invite and friends request on Steam from http://steamcommunity.com/id/SoTFLeague/ to get you setup for that match in July!

There have also been some concerns about teams wanting to make substitutions due to unforeseen circumstances during the qualification period. For those of you who would like to, please get in touch with Jat@studiowildcard.com and we’ll discuss the details further, as well as any other question you may have about the event.

Good luck to all Survivors out there and let’s see who gets crowned the Season One Summer Cup Champions of ARK: Survival of the Fittest!

We’re excited to announce the first set of teams (from the May 2016 Survivor League qualifiers) that were able to successfully qualify for the Summer Cup Semi Final Match! The winning teams from the Final Match will be invited to be flown out to the ARK Survival of the Fittest Season One: Summer Cup in Shanghai, China at ChinaJoy 2016 and get the chance to compete for over $40,000!

To read more details about the Summer Cup just check out: http://playark.com/summercup/

And without further ado, the teams which have successfully qualified for the Semi Finals are:

Tribe: Barside Brawlers
Members: Fuzee, Bardave, The Tyrant, and Spur

Tribe: Kitty Cats
Members: MOLNMAN, HANNIBAL, Bertman, and Wilson Wilson

Tribe: BELIEBERS
Members: lunde, pbot, piespace, and Fmentz

Tribe: KappaPride
Members: Vinz, Deki, PedroSaltana, and Rezy

Tribe: Carnivore Drop
Members: D a r k r e l l, KireGame, 9e9e9, and adriancarballo

Tribe: Arma Poulet
Members: xutv, Blad, Warlock, and Oni

Tribe: The Rejects
Members: Flex, Bobster, Frumm, and TVA04

Tribe: YGD
Members: Bilbobagins, Wiener_Schnitzel, #JJ#, and Iratus.exe

Tribe: Silky Smooth
Members: Celine, Uhivra, Claus, Jigsaw

Tribe: PsychoSocial
Members: SonnyDreamX3, PSYCHOxnc, Hanseatenpower, and sgibba

Important Notice Regarding the Teams

We were approached last night by a tribe who had participated in the Survivor League qualifiers claiming that they should have placed in the top 10. Our early examination of the results indicated that this would have been the case, but due to an error with the fourth member - they were skipped out on. However, upon re-examination of the score, we have found that they are indeed correct and have readjusted the teams accordingly. Tribe YDG have now qualified for the Summer Cup Semi Finals and Tribe Chinese Storytellers will have to compete in this month's league to secure qualification. We will be watching the league as it progresses, in the event that there are not enough qualified full-teams at the end of the league, certain teams will receive invites to the semi final game, based on their performance throughout the two months and previous SotF Experience. Thank you for staying diligent towards the game and letting us know about our error. We apologize for any confusion, and if anyone else would like to get in touch - feel free to do so, just contact Jat@studiowildcard.com and all claims will be looked into!

Thanks!

-----

These were the teams who had the collected highest points following May’s Survivor League Qualifier Rankings! We’d like to congratulate them on their valiant play and look forward to them participating in the upcoming match in July!

Don’t worry for those of you who haven’t yet qualified, you still have another chance by playing through the 4v4 Survivor League ladder during June (visible in real-time here: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/ )! The scores were pretty close all together, and we’ll be hoping to invite another 10 teams to the match.

The invited teams will be set a special group invite and friends request on Steam from http://steamcommunity.com/id/SoTFLeague/ to get you setup for that match in July!

Good luck to all Survivors out there and let’s see who gets crowned the Season One Summer Cup Champions of ARK: Survival of the Fittest!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

Survivor League Winners

We had 3 exciting play off games, one for each mode and these were the contestants who proved that they were the fittest survivors of May! They have earned a place in the Survivor League archive as well as their share of $85,600 in cash!

May Survivor League Championship Winners

This prize pool is actually a bit larger than normal haha. Due to an error on our part during the Playoff FFA Game - we ended up with a 6-way tie for first place, and for this reason - we'll be awarding all players with first place, and then from there going down - so we actually had a total of 15 winners!

We’ll be reaching out to the winners over the coming days to collect the information required to get your prizes sent out to you! Look out for contact made by Jat!

Twitch Stream

If you hadn't had a chance to watch the stream, don't worry - you can check out the vod! We streamed all three matches on our twitch channel where it'll remain available for you guys to watch!

https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark/v/70490496

The games were casted by TypeForced, a known and avid SotF player and we'd like to thank him for helping us out and covering BikeMan without much notice - there was a bit of a hiccup at the start but it was a great stream nonetheless!

As for the specific matches, you can check out each one when they start here:

FFA: https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark/v/70490496?t=06m16s

2 Player Tribes: https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark/v/70490496?t=01h14m49s

4 Player Tribes: https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark/v/70490496?t=02h55m59s

Survivor League

The scores have been reset next Survivor League qualification process has begun! Good luck to all Survivors who hope to compete in the upcoming Championship match for June!

You can check out where you place on the current rankings at:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team

As May comes to a close, we edge closer to determining who will join the ranks of the Survivor League this month.

The ARK: Survival of the Fittest May Survivor League Championship matches will take place from 11 am EST to 2 pm EST on Saturday, June 4, with a bounty of more than $65,000 in prizes to that day’s winners.

The championship games will be shoutcasted by streaming personality BikeMan. These matches will be invite-only -- based on the top-ranked players for May 2016. Check https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/ to see where you stand. If you rank on the list at 11:59 pm EST, Tuesday, May 31, you will receive an invite via Steam to the Championship. There will be championship games for the top Free For All players, 2 player tribes, and 4 player tribes to determine who is really the fittest survivor.

We invite all ARK fans, and the newly curious, to come watch the epic battles at that time on our Twitch channel: www.twitch.tv/survivetheark!

To those competing: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors! And may the fittest survivor be victorious!

Survivor League

Hello Survivors!

The May Survivor League Qualifications is under way with Survivors heading to the battle-arena and working on making their way up the rankings and for their shot at the $65,600!

At the end of the countdown period, which can can be found on our Survivor League homepage: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/ players who are holding a ranked position in their respective leader boards will be invited to a tournament to take place at the beginning of next month where the victors will be crowned May’s Survivor League!



Season One: Summer Cup!

And that’s not all! During PAX we were very excited to announce our first ever international offline tournament, The Summer Cup! The registration and qualification process for the cup is now open to Survivors to begin competing!

If you would like a chance to qualify for ARK Survival of the Fittest Season One: Summer Cup and the chance to be flown to Shanghai, China and compete for over $40,000 head on over to www.playark.com/summercup where more details about this awesome international event can be found and tribe leaders can begin registering their teams for the tournament!

Good luck to all blood-thirsty Survivors and may the odds be ever in your favour!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

Hello Survivors!

Since the first announcement of Survivor League, we have had constant feedback from the Community and we’ve been working together to figure out what would be the best way to run a competitive league for our players.

During PAX we had the opportunity to meet up with many players, and discuss where we really wanted to go with Survivor League.

After many conversations with the community, a lot of the players who placed/ranked in the survivor league, people who stream SotF and other players and influencers in other competitive scenes gave us a ton of great feedback about the Survivor League, prizing, and tournaments/gameplay.

This, combined with some metrics that were collected on the League, led us to make some pretty exciting changes to the upcoming way we will handle Survivor League, and these changes are made effective immediately in order to create a better League and competitive environment for our community and the game.



Survival of the Fittest

6 Player Mode

• This “Official” game mode has been removed.
  

• This is now the primary tournament mode.
  

Hello Survivors!

We’ve got more news for you from #PAXEast2016! We are very excited to announce the first ever ARK: Survival of the Fittest International Tournament to be held offline this Summer! The tournament will be taking place in Shanghai, during China Digital Entertainment Expo & Conference, ChinaJoy 2016. Qualified teams will be flown out July 29 - 31 to compete in person for this gigantic offline-event with more than $40,000 up for grabs!

Team leaders need to register at http://playark.com/summercup between May 1 - 10 then grab their teammates to starting competing in the dinosaur survivor slaughter fest in “4v4 Tournament Mode” specifically. The 40 (7 Teams) highest-Scoring registered Tournament Mode players during May and June (80 players total / 20 teams) will be invited to an online Semi-Final match to be held on July 1, 2016. The top 8 North American and/or European teams from the Semi-Final will then advance to the official Summer Cup, traveling to Shanghai to play in the offline finals match hosted at Shanghai’s ChinaJoy 2016! The ongoing “Survival League” rankings for all elite titles in ARK: Survival of the Fittest are visible in real-time on www.survivetheark.com at launch.

We can wait to see all the teams participate and show off their strategies throughout the next two months and are eagerly anticipating the slaughter-fest to take place on July the 1st and of course July 29th and 31st! We’ll be revealing more details about the registration process soon, and if you guys have any questions, feel free to get in touch as always!

Good luck to all Survivors out there and let’s see who gets crowned the Season One Summer Cup Champions of ARK: Survival of the Fittest!

Other specific changes to be noted about Survivor League and the Summers Cup:

• You cannot compete in this Tournament if you are under the age of 18
  
• The top 40 unique registered players in the Tournament League for each month will be invited to the Finals Match, so if a Survivor has placed in the Top 40 twice, it will skip them and then grab the next-best player. Similarly, if a player has placed in the top 40 but not registered for the Summer Cup, he or she will be skipped.
  
• Your Team Leader must ensure that when registering your team, you use the same Team Name and Survivor Name in the game, as well register all members of your team.
  
• You are permitted to have mixed-member teams from different regions, but all of your team members must, for the time being, hail from North America or European Union countries. Next Cups will include more regions.
  
• Teams in China will have their own qualification process and they will already be there ready to play for when you arrive for the finals.
  
• Graphical settings will be enforced for the qualification period and for the tournament.
  
• Going forward on our website, we will be displaying the concurrent Top 100 Players’ Scores in each mode, so you can see where you place and how close you are to qualifying for the Summer Cup Finals, and also for each Month’s Survivor League Tournament Match.
  

Survivor League Winners

Congratulations to all the winners who placed in our first Survivor League ever! It’s been an exciting time for ARK SotF players and we saw a wide variety of strategy used. Emotions ran high and the final list of players we have ended with are as follows;



They have earned a place in the Survivor League archive as well as their share of $64,800 in cash! The prizes are broken down as such:

1st Place: $3500
2nd Place: $2500
3rd Place: $1800
4th Place: $1650
5th Place: $1500
6th Place: $1350
7th Place: $1200
8th Place: $1050
9th Place: $900
10th Place: $750

We’ll be reaching out to the winners over the coming days to collect the information required to get your prizes sent out to you! Look out for contact made by Jat! In the case where players share the same score but different rank, both will be awarded with the higher-cash prize. So in this case, both Cirar - Frittest Mayo and PedroSaltana[Ralph] will receive the prize for first place and then it will skip to Sr. Dinch in third place. So yes, the prize pool will be higher this month! :)

Upcoming changes made to SotF and Survivor League

Survivor League will officially go on halt until May the 1st 2016 where we’ll begin the next round of games. This will include a soft-reset which will not affect your wins, but your other stats so your progress towards the Giga will be kept in-tact!

We will be making further changes to Survivor League which will be announced fairly soon, those changes will in-fact not take place until June’s Survivor League to adhere to our 30-day policy.

We will also be introducing Blind Matchmaking to the game within the next few days, we will use the period from now until the 1st of May to heavily iterate on it and make any changes that are necessary to matchmaking, as well as possible adjustments to how Scores are calculated for matches, to ensure that skilful players are being rewarded sufficiently for demonstrating their ability as the Fittest Survivors.

We are also super excited to announce that shortly we will be introducing Grappling Hooks to Survival of the Fittest! We are eager to see the new game play mechanics that this will bring into the game and how players will make use of this new form of maneuverability during combat.

With the excitement of future tournaments, our main-game mode designed around tournament-play will be receiving a graphical overhaul as well as a rename. 6-Player mode will now be known as Tournament Mode and it will automatically enable and enforce higher-graphical settings to make the game more competitive. These settings will be also used during our upcoming Official Tournaments, so players will now be able to get closer to a high-end competitive-experience when playing matches of this type. We want to ensure that you guys are able to train in the environments that you will compete in so we will attempt to recreate the exact Official Tournament specifications as much as possible, starting with this change.

Disqualification, Sportsmanship and the future of Survival of the Fittest

Over the past few weeks we have had a lot of reports concerning the sportsmanship and behaviour of players in Survival of the Fittest throughout the community. We understand that in the heat of the competition, emotions can get the best of us. We would like to remind all players to ensure that they have respect for each other during the games, you do not have to enjoy the company of the people you’re playing against, however there is no need to hurl verbal insults or harass members of the community, one which you’re a part of. We would like to make it clear that in future circumstances, players found showing a poor sense of sportsmanship may risk being banned from Survival of the Fittest.

Throughout this first month we have had to disqualify players due to heavy abuse of the matchmaking system when engaging in competitive matches. Players were found to be manipulating lobbies and exploiting the mechanics in an unintended way to gain an unfair advantage over their opponents. As stated in the FAQ, Studio Wildcard holds the authority and discretion to determine what gaining an unfair advantage would be and we will step in if necessary, like we have with this round of Survivor League. Players who were removed from April’s rankings will only suffer a one-time reset. They are still permitted to participate in future rounds, as well as tournaments but continuous abuse and manipulation of the system will result in absolute disqualification. We want to harbour a good environment where players are playing at the best and fairly. The game is still growing and it is subject to a lot of change based on these kinds of issues and feedback from the SotF community; with your help we can make sure that we’re able to achieve this.

As a free competitive game, the future of Survival of the Fittest lives by this community. For Survival of the Fittest to succeed, we need the community’s help by promoting the game, encouraging their friends to play it, helping out new players, giving us solid feedback on how to improve and working with us to make a better game. We really value your commitment and dedication to the game, and we want to ensure that we can make it grow and for Survival of the Fittest to be as special as you all wish it to be. Let’s work together to foster a positive community and a great competitive scene!

Thank you everyone for participating in April’s Survivor League! The next round of Survivor League will begin on May the 1st and will include the Grappling Hook, Blind Matchmaking and more (Giga...). We’re looking forward to seeing all SotF survivors play and continue to refine their strategies, skills, and teamwork!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team.

p.s If you'd like to check out the Community Crunch, you can read it here! https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/articles.html/april-survivor-league-winners-sotf-update-community-crunch-44-r152/ - it includes some SotF tutorial videos from typeForced!

Hey Survivors!

Today we are very excited to announce that ARK: Survival of the Fittest is now available for Mac, Linux, and SteamOS on Steam Early Access! 



These versions share all of the features and content of the PC version of the game and includes seamless online cross-play, with players able to play together no matter which platform they choose.

Thank you for being so patient with us, and we look forward to seeing you in the arena soon!

Survivor League

Also as a reminder, there is only a few days left to compete to enter our first Survivor League.

The Survivor League is a hall of fame that intends to honor and preserve the top 40 Survival of the Fittest players of said period. At the end of every league, we will be celebrating the highest-scoring players, which will be visible in real time, by both archiving them and announcing them as the Survivor League for that month.

If you'd like to learn more details and about how to get involved in the Survivor League, click here.

Best of luck to all of our competitors, and may the fittest survivor win!

Much love,
Wildcard Jen & The ARK Survival Evolved Team!

Survivor League

We are excited to announce that the first Survivor League is officially LIVE! You can keep track of when this round ends by heading over to our Survivor League page and checking out the countdown to see when the top-ranked players will be archived into the league. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Survivor League, here’s a run down!

What is Survivor League?

The Survivor League is a hall of fame that intends to honor and preserve the top 40 Survival of the Fittest players of said period. At the end of every league, we will be celebrating the highest-scoring players, which will be visible in real time, by both archiving them and announcing them as the Survivor League for that month.

How long does each Survivor League last?

Each Survivor League will last approximately 30 days. Players will be able to see when the next winners are announced by visiting:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/

At the top of this page, there will be a visible clock which will highlight how long is left until the winners are archived and the next session begins. This page will also contain a current leaderboard which will display, in real time, the survivors who are currently top of the rankings. Keep in mind, those survivors may not be the ones who make it into the Survivor League at the end of the session, as they will need to keep their place for when the timer hits zero.

When does the first Survivor League start?

The first Survivor League will be announced on April the 15th at 12PM Eastern. This means that all active games now will count towards the first league and players are able to keep track of when the winners will be archived by checking the clock at the top of Survivor League page.

How will the ranking system work?

Ranks are determined by the amount of score you have in each specific game-mode. When the clock hits zero, the Top 10 Ranking players in each of the 4 game modes, a total of 40 players, will be declared and entered into the Survivor League. Following this, the new clock will begin ticking for the next Survivor League.

Ranks will not be reset after each month has been awarded so it is entirely possible for players to stay on the league for multiple months, however a player’s score may start to decay if a player has not played for over 1 week.

What are the benefits to becoming a part of the Survivor League?

There are many benefits to becoming a member of the Survivor League. First of all, the top 10 players in each mode will receive a cash-prize dependant on their placement on the rank tables. The prizes will be distributed as following:

Place Prize Pool
1 $3500
2 $2500
3 $1800
4 $1650
5 $1500
6 $1350
7 $1200
8 $1050
9 $900
10 $750

These prizes will be allocated accordingly to all 40 members of the Survivor League for that month. Survivor League members will also be archived and celebrated throughout the game in the Survivor League Archives and members of this exclusive and honorary league will be invited to upcoming broadcasted Tournaments, so getting into the league is not just a way to win a large amount of money and glory, but also a way to earn even more prizes and glory in the future. We are serious about the Survival of the Fittest becoming a serious competitive e-sports game and with that, want to celebrate players who are dedicated and perform to the highest standard!

Disqualification from Survivor League

Any player found to be exploiting the game by gaining an unfair advantage through the use of unintended mechanics or third party programmes will risk being disqualified from the league. Studio Wildcard holds the authority and discretion to determine what gaining an unfair advantage would be and will step in if necessary. Disqualification from Survivor League may result in, but is not limited to: being permanently banned from ARK Survival of the Fittest, stripped of all Survivor League titles, forfeiture of any unpaid monetary prizes and prohibited from entering or participating any tournament.

Changes made to Survivor League

Studio Wildcard holds the right to make any changes to the terms of participation, the methods of qualification, and the prizes for for Survivor League as they deem necessary. However any such changes will be notified to players in advance and will not have an effect for 30 days.

This does not impact balance or other such changes to the game mode, Survival of The Fittest, only to the terms of the Survivor League and its associated prizes/titles/rewards, etc.

Good luck to all those competing and may the best survivors win!



Mod Contest



We just wanted to remind you guys that you are approaching the deadline for the entries very shortly and that on Friday, April the 1st at 12PM EASTERN, entries will be officially closed!

All entries must be submitted here by the final submission date and the winners will be announced on May the 15th 2016, after finalist voting, spotlight and judging rounds.

Cave Rework!

So you guys have now had a few days to check out our new caves on ARK: Survival Evolved and we really hope you’ve enjoyed running through them! We’re going to start looking at the older caves now and give them a bit of a makeover, here’s a little sneak-peek ;). Let us know what you think!









And to read the full Digest including Q+A, just click here!

Much love,
Wildcard Jen & The ARK Survival Evolved Team!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56SvsV6Pb6E
Survival of the Fittest

We are excited to announce that ARK: Survival of the Fittest is now available as a totally free, standalone, ‘Multiplayer Online Survival Arena’ built for eSport gameplay!

SotF originated as a spin-off mod which came to be with the release of our ARK: Survival Evolved development kit. The mode was first available as a ‘Total Conversion’ and debuted worldwide with a 70-person slaughter fest of a tournament. Following the success of the game mode, tournaments, and feedback from the community, SotF has been refactored into its own competitive game including four new modes, a robust ranking system, massively boosted performance, cosmetic-tiered rewards, lobbies/parties/on-demand-matchmaking, and constant iteration. That’s not all though! On top of releasing as a free game, SotF will also be awarding cash prizes for the top players in each ‘Survivor League’, so ARK survivors can start playing their favourite game at a professional competitive level!



Survivors can form one to six person Tribes with the options to choose Unofficial (Player-Hosted) and Official (Ranked) servers, and a variety of game-lengths and sizes in which to play. Players will start in the base forest environment introduced in the original ARK: Survival Evolved, with new environments and creatures introduced as the game evolves. Dedicated eSport rankings, matchmaking, reward, and upcoming Tournaments make ARK: SotF readily accessible to all players and after each month we’ll be awarding over $50,000 to the Top-10 Ranked Players in each of the four game modes, referred to as the ‘Survivor League’!. Once the League is ready to go live, we'll go out with an announcement! So use this time to practice and prepare for launch of the Survivor League!


The 'Survivor League' is a LIVE feed of in-game data to see who are the current top ranked players in each game mode!

SotF is balanced for intense competition, contestants begin in a neutral staging area where they can communicate pre-game, strategize, or talk trash. After a countdown, they dramatically descend from the sky onto the ARK in a circular formation via beams of light. There is a cache of valuable items in the center – do survivors dash for the goods and fight it out, do they run into the forest and hide, search for Dinosaurs to rapidly build their army, or do they freeze up from the sheer terror of death? A continually shrinking “Ring of Death” forces contestants ever closer together over time. The hunt is on!

KEY FEATURES

• Free, Action-Packed Core Survival Gameplay
  
• Fully functional spectator system, including First Person Spectator!
  
• 75+ Creatures to Tame and Ride at full launch
  
• Multiple Official Game Modes (FFA, 2 Player Tribes, 4 Player Tribes, and 6 Player Tribes)
  
• Game-Changing Tameable Super Creatures (Dragon, Giant Ape, Brood Mother)
  
• Mysterious “Evolution Events”
  
• Arsenal of Weapons, Traps, Armor, Structures and other Items from
• Primitive to Modern Tech Tiers
  
• Official Ranked and Unofficial customized player-hosted servers
  
• Upcoming Mod Support
  
• Robust Ranking and Tournament System
  
• Exclusive SotF Cosmetic Items that can also be used in ARK: Survival Evolved
  
• One-to-Six Player Tribes
  
• Custom-Painted “War Banners” enable Tribes to show off their team spirit on Flags across their army of Dinosaurs, and are also broadcast on the gigantic billboards during game events. Just don’t draw anything offensive!
  Top-ranked players are listed dynamically on SurviveTheArk.com as the ‘Survivor League’, and provided with over $50,000 in monthly cash prizes!
  
• A custom soundtrack written by award-winning composer of "Ori and the Blind Forest", Gareth Coker!
  

ARK: Survival Of The Fittest is Now Available on Steam Early Access!

ARK: Survival of the Fittest is a free, Multiplayer Online Survival Arena (MOSA) game that pits as many as 72 combatants against one another in the struggle for survival in a harsh, changing environment packed with deadly creatures, “Evolution Events,” and other players. How long will you survive?