ARK: Survival Evolved has spun off its Hunger-Gamesy Survival of the Fittest mod into a free standalone murderfest on Steam. And that's free in the old fashioned sense of the word—the announcement claims that there will be "no monetisation" but with the benefits of a fully supported game and cash prizes for the top 10 players in each of its four Survivor Leagues. From this we can assume that ARK is doing very well for itself indeed.
For an Early Access game, Survival of the Fittest is making an astonishingly aggressive push into the world of esports. The trailer is patched together from casters' commentary and the free-for-all, two-player, four-player and six-player leagues will compete over a prize pool of $50,000. And fair play to it—lots of developers are toying with the Hunger Games formula but few are polished enough to have a shot at the big time. Survival of the Fittest invites anyone to have a go if they think they're hard enough.
Survival of the Fittest (and ARK at large) isn't flawless by a long way—it's notoriously taxing on your rig—but combatants will be pleased to hear that the standalone comes with "massively boosted performance", along with the obvious additions of a ranking system, matchmaking and cosmetic rewards that carry over to ARK proper.
ARK would like us to refer to its new sibling as a 'Multiplayer Online Survival Arena'. I'm not going to do that, because there are enough meaningless acronyms in the world. How about we dub the genre 'battle royale' instead? I mean, obviously there are copyright issues, but I won't tell anyone if you won't.
It'd be nice if they fixed the original one that I've paid for first, before moving onto something else
akhan_29 to Cakeboy79
17 Mar 16#7
Fantastic game! Been playing this a lot and ran through this multiplayer game a couple of times yesterday. Super tense. May still need some balancing tweaks but great fun.
The original is still being updated this is just an extension for the multiplayer side of things.
onion86 to Cakeboy79
20 Mar 16#10
Seems a bit excessive to need a 9.4GB download too, surely it shares a lot more resources than that!
Forgottenshopper
16 Mar 161#5
Thanks Buzz..
danielrobson50
16 Mar 161#6
Awesome! would love to have a bash of this
ThisName to danielrobson50
17 Mar 16#8
I wouldn't bash off to this.
Scootss
20 Mar 16#9
going to have to try this out looks like a right laugh
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![Steam] ARK: Survival Of The Fittest - Steam Store](/images/topics/94_1.jpg)
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Opening post
ARK: Survival Evolved has spun off its Hunger-Gamesy Survival of the Fittest mod into a free standalone murderfest on Steam. And that's free in the old fashioned sense of the word—the announcement claims that there will be "no monetisation" but with the benefits of a fully supported game and cash prizes for the top 10 players in each of its four Survivor Leagues. From this we can assume that ARK is doing very well for itself indeed.
For an Early Access game, Survival of the Fittest is making an astonishingly aggressive push into the world of esports. The trailer is patched together from casters' commentary and the free-for-all, two-player, four-player and six-player leagues will compete over a prize pool of $50,000. And fair play to it—lots of developers are toying with the Hunger Games formula but few are polished enough to have a shot at the big time. Survival of the Fittest invites anyone to have a go if they think they're hard enough.
Survival of the Fittest (and ARK at large) isn't flawless by a long way—it's notoriously taxing on your rig—but combatants will be pleased to hear that the standalone comes with "massively boosted performance", along with the obvious additions of a ranking system, matchmaking and cosmetic rewards that carry over to ARK proper.
ARK would like us to refer to its new sibling as a 'Multiplayer Online Survival Arena'. I'm not going to do that, because there are enough meaningless acronyms in the world. How about we dub the genre 'battle royale' instead? I mean, obviously there are copyright issues, but I won't tell anyone if you won't.
10 comments
Ark: Survival of the Fittest gameplay
The original is still being updated this is just an extension for the multiplayer side of things.