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ARK: Survival Evolved

Ark's Jeremy Stieglitz: "Hand was forced" with price hike

The Ark co-creative director explained the sudden price increase.

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It's no secret that Ark: Survival Evolved's price increase in the run up to a full release was controversial, with many like DayZ creator Dean Hall voicing their concerns, however, lead programmer and co-creative director Jeremy Stieglitz recently spoke to PC Gamer about the decision, shedding some light on the price increase and why it happened.

"Admittedly, my intent, our intent, was to have the price hit the full retail price when the full retail launch occurred," Stieglitz said. "That would have been at the retail launch, not prior to that. The reality turned out to be, and we didn't realise this until we got to the final phase of getting the game into retail channels, was that: in order to get the game into retailers—that is not digital retailers but physical ones, both for the physical disc PC version and the console version—the retailers and distributors wouldn't take it if the digital versions was cheaper than the retail version. They found that it would undermine their sales potential."

In terms of value, though, he said it "certainly will be there at the date of retail launch—that means you buy it now for $60 [USD], for example, in three weeks it's going to be $60. It would've been $60 in three weeks anyway and we wouldn't release a game that we didn't feel was worth that. We're really confident that there's a hell of a lot of value in that package—content, features and fun gameplay."

"It is unfortunate and was absolutely not our original intent and not something I wanted personally, to have that price hike occur prior to the retail launch. I can certainly understand why that ruffled feathers and p***ed people off, to be blunt, and I can only say that sometimes we as a developer can't control the variables. You might say, well, we didn't have to do it and that's true but then we wouldn't be able to have a physical retail launch."

"I think, ultimately, that's important to me personally—not from a money standpoint but from a vanity standpoint. But also it's important for Ark to be able to reach players in the non-digital community, in the physical gaming community. There really is half the market, these people who buy games in stores worldwide and we do feel that from a playerbase standpoint, those new players are going to add a lot of fun to existing Ark players as well."

"Given it was close to launch we decided to bite the bullet on it. Was it the right decision? I can't say but it was motivated by the need to get the game on store shelves and our hand was ultimately forced from that standpoint."

Do you sympathise with the price increase a bit more after reading this?

ARK: Survival Evolved

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ARK: Survival EvolvedScore

ARK: Survival Evolved

REVIEW. Written by Ford James

"ARK: Survival Evolved is a solid survival experience and one of the better options available, on console at the very least."



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