Earlier this year,Snail Games released a fully AI trailer for Ark: Aquatica, a huge underwater expansion for long-standing survival hitArk: Survival Evolved, to much backlash. The expansion has now been released to the world, and, quite simply, it has broken the game.
Players have reported that their existing saves are no longer playable, their settings have been reset, and anymods they’d previously downloadedno longer function. This has, naturally, led to significant fallout among the community.
Ark: Survival Evolved’s Aquatica DLC Is A Disaster
Reports first emerged online that Ark: Aquatica had broken Ark: Survival Evolved last night, with player complaints flooding social media platforms likeReddit. The posts showed players spawning into completely empty maps, while others complained about mods no longer being compatible, the game running slower, and a generally far worse user experience.
The impact of the new updatewas instantly apparent, with data fromSteamDBshowing that the game’s player count had dropped to lows barelyseen in Ark’s 9+ year history. Aquatica itself launched to ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ reviews on Steam.
On Reddit, user Pawahhh said, “One of the best video games ever completely ruined by one of the worst companies ever.” Many others lamented the game’s downfall, saying their final goodbyes. “Rest in peace, Ark: Survival Evolved. You will be missed, my dear friend,“saidWest_DragonKing, while Final-Neighborhood52added, “They killed Ark in less than a day!”
One of the best video games ever completely ruined by one of the worst companies ever.
Unsurprisingly, given such backlash, Snail Games issued a lengthy response. While it stopped short of apologizing, it said:
“We have enabled a public branch of the game that was the previous build before the update at launch. Players will be able to opt into that branch and continue to play A.S.E. pre-Aquatica release. Even if you have purchased Aquatica, you can use the branch to get back to the mods while we update!”
Despite the problems, Snail Games still attempted to sell a broken product to players in its announcement, saying, “Take advantage of the introductory Aquatica discount in the meantime — you can buy it now and play later once fixes have been made,“banning the word “refund"from its official Discord server in the process.
It’s a really messy situation for what has long been one of themost popular survival games in the world. Given the lack of acceptance and apology, player skepticism is entirely valid, and it will be interesting to see how the company addresses the damage it has done.
