After originally being revealed in 2020, Ark 2 has been delayed again until 2028
Developer Studio Wildcard is focusing on a major 2027 expansion for Ark: Survival Ascended first
The studio behind Ark: Survival Evolved has announced a major delay for the game’s sequel, saying it’s still another three years away.
Ark 2 was originally announced at The Game Awards ceremony back in 2020, with a trailer showing Fast & Furious star Vin Diesel battling dinosaurs and tribal enemies.
The game had originally been planned for a 2023 release, but in April 2023 developer Studio Wildcard announced that it had been pushed back to 2024, with a remaster of the first game called Ark: Survival Ascended instead coming in late 2023.
Now, with that 2024 release window clearly come and gone, Studio Wildcard has announced that Ark 2 will be released in 2028 – five years after its original release window and eight years after its Game Awards debut.
Before then, the studio aims to continue releasing new content for Ark: Survival Ascended, including a major expansion called Legacy of Santiago which is planned for the end of 2027.
The game received its first major expansion, The Lost Colony, last week, and according to studio co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz marks the start of a two-year roadmap for the game.
As explained in a story on the Epic Games Store, Survival Ascended is set to receive seven major content updates in the next two years, culminating in the release of the Legacy of Santiago expansion in Q4 2027.
Stieglitz says the lengthy delay for Ark 2 is for two reasons, the first being to let Ark: Survival Ascended last longer.
“One thing we learned is to not say goodbye until your players want you to,” he explained. “To be honest with you, we kind of just hard-stopped updating Ark: Survival Evolved, and were like ‘OK, we’re done with it’. And actually, players were kind of mad about that, because they weren’t ready, they wanted more content at that point.
“With ARK: Survival Ascended, we’ll keep working on it, even if it’s not the only thing we’re doing. We’ll keep working on making content for it as long as people still want to play it and pay for content, because we made that mistake with our transition from Ark: Survival Evolved.”
The other reason for Ark 2’s delay, according to Stieglitz, is that the development team can use learnings from Ark: Survival Ascended’s upcoming two years of new content to learn what works and what doesn’t, making it less likely that Ark 2 will release to criticism like the original Ark did.
“Legacy of Santiago will allow us to explore a lot of mechanics that we want to do with Ark 2, but it kind of derisks that,” he said.
“Essentially, if we don’t do it right, if we don’t do it perfectly, we’re able to iterate on it with a live game and get a lot more feedback than to just release something standalone. It’s much safer for us to get a lot of that feedback in a live game where we can react much more fluidly to what players are telling us.”
