Who is Studio Wildcard?

[Monarchco]

The company did not appear to exist before this game.
I can not find any: corperation address, phone number, employee records, etc at all online.

The company website only has a single item(that is a link to ARK: Survival Evolved's site: playark.com)

playark.com, registratrar is GODADDY.COM, and when looking closer at a whois sheet:

https://who.godaddy.com/whoisstd.aspx?domain=playark.com&prog_id=GoDaddy&k=EtGMyRqJSGtFaHd%20bR8ITCeWp01I3an54j0ksxK18gqvKIsEHKBsE9AF2d2AoJwE

You see the registrant as a proxy domain company.

"Registrant Name: Registration Private
Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
Registrant Street: DomainsByProxy.com
Registrant Street: 14747 N Northsight Blvd Suite 111, PMB 309"

The trail ends there are no records can be obtained past DomainsByProxy.com (They're very serious about client privacy apparently).

Just about every game these days is registered under the publisher name, (If you go to the whois for battlefield, you'll see Electronic Arts. Not a proxy.)

The only contact to their company is a mailto redirect on the game's website, linking as: mailto:[e-mail]


Am I only person who finds it bothering that the game is being both produced and published at a fairly high price(as it's being developed for linux, mac, PC, & both Xbox one & PS4), but a ghost company?

*TO CLARIFY EDIT:* I don't mean high price as in price of purchase, but high price in developement of the game.

There is no wiki page, I can't find it publically traded anywhere. I can't find -anything- on it besides a few "company profile" pages that are missing everything(phone, address, etc) but the company's name.

And to those who may point out I don't own the game, you're right. and this is the #1 reason why.

A company that's doing everything possible to keep itself hidden... isn't exactly a good thing, as there is no valid, good reason for them to not want to build up a brand name.

[wirs]

There is a wiki.

[Too Fats, Too Furious]

You discovered the vast conspiracy behind ARK! Or you know just enough Google-Fu to confuse yourself.

If you're keen on looking up information about Studio Wildcard to determine if they're legitimate or not, take a gander at the various positions previously held by their co-Founder and co-Creative Director, Jesse Rapczak.

This isn't a mod-team attempting to launch their first game.

[PhanTOM]

They could be running their business from a cave in iraq for all I care, as long as the game works and they keep up the patching speed like they are doing I think they are a great company.

Also pretty sure they only formed the company in November of last year.

[Gasui]

All those work just for 25dollar. Paranoid much? Geez either buy the game and have fun or play other games. You do this too for every dollar you spend? Even if they bail now my 25 dollar is well spend.

[Loki]

I said the same about Blizzard Entairtainement back in 1994 :p

[Mimi Moonbeam]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesserapczak

https://www.linkedin.com/company/studio-wildcard?trk=ppro_cprof

[Aerothan]

Ever think that it is a start-up company, and maybe didnt spend time on a website but rather the game. I would expect over the next year you'll see some more information pop up about the company

[Tim]

Yea its only 25 dollars man. Like Hiron said, even if they bail now I got tons of fun out of it. Its the price of 2-3 meals man. There is no need to get so paranoid unless they charged 50+. Get the game and have fun playing.

[Cowige]

maybe its a game that will contol our mind and make us kill all we love

[Jesse Rapczak]

Originally posted by Monarchco:

The company did not appear to exist before this game.
I can not find any: corperation address, phone number, employee records, etc at all online.

The company website only has a single item(that is a link to ARK: Survival Evolved's site: playark.com)

playark.com, registratrar is GODADDY.COM, and when looking closer at a whois sheet:

https://who.godaddy.com/whoisstd.aspx?domain=playark.com&prog_id=GoDaddy&k=EtGMyRqJSGtFaHd%20bR8ITCeWp01I3an54j0ksxK18gqvKIsEHKBsE9AF2d2AoJwE

You see the registrant as a proxy domain company.

"Registrant Name: Registration Private
Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
Registrant Street: DomainsByProxy.com
Registrant Street: 14747 N Northsight Blvd Suite 111, PMB 309"

The trail ends there are no records can be obtained past DomainsByProxy.com (They're very serious about client privacy apparently).

Just about every game these days is registered under the publisher name, (If you go to the whois for battlefield, you'll see Electronic Arts. Not a proxy.)

The only contact to their company is a mailto redirect on the game's website, linking as: mailto:[e-mail]


Am I only person who finds it bothering that the game is being both produced and published at a fairly high price(as it's being developed for linux, mac, PC, & both Xbox one & PS4), but a ghost company?

*TO CLARIFY EDIT:* I don't mean high price as in price of purchase, but high price in developement of the game.

There is no wiki page, I can't find it publically traded anywhere. I can't find -anything- on it besides a few "company profile" pages that are missing everything(phone, address, etc) but the company's name.

And to those who may point out I don't own the game, you're right. and this is the #1 reason why.

A company that's doing everything possible to keep itself hidden... isn't exactly a good thing, as there is no valid, good reason for them to not want to build up a brand name.

Hey Monarchco, nice to meet you!

I know it is hard to believe that a small, unknown team of developers has produced ARK - but that's the games industry for you. All of us on this project have worked on a bunch of titles big and small, as well as cutting edge hardware platforms in our various jobs and roles prior to this.

We have no publisher at this time and no external money source "guiding" our development, which is great for everyone in the community and the purity of the game. We are very transparent about everything we do and hope through following our development of the game you will be even more excited about what the team might do in the future.

Jesse Rapczak
A Real Person Who Lives In Seattle

[Codyak]

Originally posted by jesse:

Jesse Rapczak
A Real Person Who Lives In Seattle

It was a little confusing as well until I read this as sometimes you released patches EST, sometimes PST. Posts from devs also seem to regularly swap between American and British spellings of words. Nice to hear about the transparency though!

[haasmd86]

They have a developer from the "Uncharted" series, the art and animation dept. from "Primal Surge". and they have a ex-Microsoft platform developer on staff that I can account for. As well as Kade Hendricks Senior Technical and Gameplay Designer.

[Jester5093]

Obviously this was posted by a bot named Jesse. No actual person can push out the number of patches you guys have put out since launch. We love your mysterious asses.

In any case, yes, I'm sure they invested and spent a lot on developing ark. I also think they already made a pretty penny given that this is probably the most successful EA I've ever seen.

Keep up the good work, you guys deserve it, this game is hella fun. Keep squashing those bugs.

[Jesse Rapczak]

Originally posted by Codyak:

Originally posted by jesse:

Jesse Rapczak
A Real Person Who Lives In Seattle

It was a little confusing as well until I read this as sometimes you released patches EST, sometimes PST. Posts from devs also seem to regularly swap between American and British spellings of words. Nice to hear about the transparency though!

We have team members spread around the world. As you can see from our job posting we don't shy away from talented people working remotely instead of on site:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?72564-ARK-Survival-Evolved

[Monarchco]

Originally posted by jesse:

Originally posted by Codyak:

It was a little confusing as well until I read this as sometimes you released patches EST, sometimes PST. Posts from devs also seem to regularly swap between American and British spellings of words. Nice to hear about the transparency though!

We have team members spread around the world. As you can see from our job posting we don't shy away from talented people working remotely instead of on site:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?72564-ARK-Survival-Evolved

My apologies. I just figured from the lack of an extensive company website, along with many of the posts being very related to Jurassic World(plus the timing of the game going early access fairly close), that Wildcard was a company owned by Universal Studios(Who have been terrible with almost every game their name has been on, and would explain them using a different name).

Much like how Disney makes action movies, but primarily puts the producer as only Marvel for all the marvel movies(no branding by Disney anywhere to be seen unless you go digging and find Marvel is owned by Disney).

With my concern was if it was a game solely for additional movie content. And well, I think most of us know how well most movie games work out.

Anyways, just glad your not owned by some company with a terrible enough track record that it'd benefit them to make a game through a brand new asset(like Universal.)