Ark: Survival Ascended

Steam Reviews

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• Not recommended Posted February 25, 2026 on Steam I love Ark, and have most of my hours in ASE. I was hesitant to buy this game with all of the extra costs, but picked it up cheap at 75% off. I do enjoy the game, but am constantly annoyed by the frequent pushes to buy more things. It seems that everything for all DLCs is installed with the base game, so that you end up seeing DLC dinos in your single player games, even if you don't own the DLC. If you try to interact with them in the game, you get a pop up asking you to buy the DLC. Started Scorched earth, found the Oasisaur in the desert, nope need DLC to interact with that one. Found some drakelings flying around, took me a while to get close enough to one to try to tame it, nope need a different DLC for that one. I had to download a spawn blocker mod to block them from spawning. On top of that, they have an entire skill tree and milestone progression pop ups, that only apply to the lost colony DLC. If you don't have the lost colony DLC, too bad, you will still get the popups and have the red icon in your inventory to tell you to buy the DLC. There are no options to turn it off, so you'll need another mod installed if you want to shut that down, instead of them just giving us the option to have it on or off. Adding on top of that, "premium" mods where we now have to pay for certain mods, instead of ASE where everything was just in the steam workshop, and we didn't have to choose between free and premium. If you like PVP (I don't), you'd better be ready to pay for pay-to-win dinos, or good luck. Again, I absolutely love this game, with well over 1000 hours between both versions, but I wish it was developed by a different company...Feels so much like they are cashing out at this point and waiting for the game to die a slow death. Good luck to Ark 2.
• Not recommended Posted December 24, 2025 on Steam A Brief History Lesson: The Devs of this game have a long history of deceit and scamming their fan base. They stole assets from their previous company to make this game, they were sued and had to pay $40 million dollars. To cover those costs they delivered a PAID DLC for their unfinished Early Access game AND half assed ♥♥♥♥ out half baked console versions of the game that barely functioned. Instead of devoting time to making their game function and play well, they instead kept pumping out content to help cover their legal fees. After they milked those plans for as much as they could they got the bright idea to make a "New game" called Atlas that was quite literally an Ark Expansion in disguise that they tried to play off as a new full game. Their were even hidden Ark logo and assets in a secret menu on the pause screen that labeled it as an "Ark Ocean". They did this under a new company name as well to make it seem like this was a brand new game, from a new dev. Their next big cash grab scam was Teasing Ark II WHILE Ark 1 is still currently in Early Access and unfinished, on top of that, they decided to also Remaster the first game in its unfinished state. They first released the Remaster bundled with Ark II as the only way to get it, and then decided to make the remaster a standalone purchase while ALSO shutting down the original Ark official servers forcing players to then buy the remaster to continue playing the game. That brings us to current day and Ark Aquatica, another Paid DLC for the NON remaster of Ark, the game that they completely abandoned for the remaster that everyone went out and bought after they shut down official servers. They effectively tried to get everyone to buy the remaster, to kill the remaining player base of the non remaster only to come back and release new paid content for the original that is just reused assets from the Atlas game I mentioned before. The people at studio wildcard are horrible evil people. Under no circumstances should you ever give them any of your money.
• Not recommended Posted February 24, 2026 on Steam An interesting policy from the developers of ARK is to release a broken game in early access, patch it for years, and in the meantime put out paid DLC. Practices like this should not be acceptable. A game should be fully finished and properly polished first, and only then should paid expansions be released.
• Not recommended Posted February 8, 2026 on Steam i dont want to need a constant 174gb space just to download a 3gb update like why did they not fix that yet just do the 3gb update not reinstall the game for every minor thing
• Not recommended Posted June 5, 2025 on Steam After playing Ark: Survival Evolved and buying into the hope that Ark: Survival Ascended would be a true upgrade, I can say without hesitation: no, it is not better. In fact, it’s significantly worse. We were led to believe this “upgrade” would bring improved graphics and quality-of-life enhancements—that was the whole reason many of us were willing to buy the same game again. We wanted to support the developers and enjoy a better-looking, smoother experience. Instead, what we got was a game that still suffers from the same bugs as ASE, along with a whole slew of new ones. And to make matters worse, the only way to get ASA running at a remotely playable level is by turning down the graphics so far that it ends up looking just like ASE did years ago. Wildcard Studios and Snail Games seem more interested in chasing quick cash than creating a quality, lasting experience. If they have long-term goals, they clearly have no intention of following through. To anyone considering buying this game: let me be honest—the concept is incredible, and the game could be amazing. But the execution and technical work simply aren't there. Unless there's a major change in leadership or ownership, this game will never reach its full potential. Save your money, your sanity, and your time. Play one of the many other games out there that actually run well, play well, and respect your investment. If the day ever comes that Snail Games or Wildcard lose the rights to the IP, there might be hope. Until then—do yourself a favor and steer clear.
• Not recommended Posted June 23, 2025 on Steam Instead of constantly releasing new expansions and DLCs that are exclusively “pay to win”, developers should rather focus on optimizing the game itself to bring new or old players back to play and thereby generate profit.