ARK: Survival Evolved Hits 200,000 Players On Steam – What Makes The Dino Adventure So Popular?

ARK: Survival Evolved has been one of the most popular survival games on the market for years and will still entertain numerous players in 2022. While fans wait for the release of the sequel, the number of players in the dinosaur adventure goes through the roof. But why is ARK so popular in general?

What are the current player numbers? ARK Survival Evolved recently set a new player count record on Steam. The previous highest value was 157,000 and was from March 2020.

On June 14, 222,500 players played (as of 06/15/2022 via SteamCharts.com) the survival title from Studio Wildcard. This is a huge jump from the previous month of May, when Steam player counts peaked at 76,000 concurrent players.

Why is ARK being played more now? There are three possible answers to the question:

• Post-Xbox & Bethesda Showcase Free Promotion: The main reason for the current increase in player numbers will be that ARK: Survival Evolved is free on Steam until June 19, 2022 can be purchased and kept after this date.
• New Map and Creatures: ARK recently received a new and fan-favorite card called Fjordur and 4 new creatures. The Fjördur release is an incentive, especially for console players, to return to the survival title. The map has been available as a mod version on Steam for months.
• Release postponement ARK 2: The postponement of ARK 2 certainly also had a small effect on the number of players, since the players now know that they can no longer count on an alternative to the game in the next few months.

“You can lose so much time in this game”

What distinguishes ARC? ARK offers survival fans a wide range of content to invest time in. In total, ARK has 5 maps that must be purchased as DLC and 7 additional maps that have been officially released by Studio Wildcard but are available for free.

In addition, the survival game convinces with a large and constantly growing selection of mystical creatures, dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. You can tame and breed them, fight with or against them and ride on them.

In addition, ARK is divided into PvP and PvE servers, where you can either fight against other players or gigantic boss creatures. So there is more than enough to do and all within the framework of typical survival elements: You have to farm tons of resources and produce almost everything you need to survive.

Added to this is the support of mods that are created by the community and made available to the players. As a result, you have a significantly larger number of maps, items, buildings and creatures on Steam than the base game offers you anyway. In ARK 2, mods will even be available on consoles.

What the positive reviews say: Anyone who has played ARK before knows that the game has its problems. Nevertheless, the player ratings are also very good. Out of over 530,000 reviews on Steam, 82% are positive.

• BamBam49 via Steam: “I highly recommend it. My grandson ‘persuaded’ me to do it, now I’m playing it with my daughter on a rented server. Although separated by hundreds of kilometers, we meet every day on the island, hunt, tame, breed dinosaurs, build and have fun.”
• Fate via Steam: “You can lose so much time in this game. Sure it has bugs, but what game doesn’t have that these days? There are also an insane amount of mods that you can use to customize the game the way you want it.”
• Sckorpiuss via Steam: “Ark is a great game because you have a lot of options and there is a wide variety of creatures, most of which you can also tame. […] There are also many free and paid DLCs that add more fun to the game. Unfortunately, it consumes a lot of storage space and requires good PC performance. Still, I highly recommend it if you’re a fan of open world survival craft games.”
• blue-15 via Steam: “Dinosaurs aren’t really my thing. I played the game with my friend and I really enjoy hunting and setting up a base together.”

If you are new to ARK: Survival Evolved thanks to the free offer on Steam and are looking for some tips, please take a look at MeinMMO.

We have some helpful guides for Studio Wildcard’s survival game on our site and show you, for example, the 10 best dinosaurs in ARK.