ARK: Survival of the Fittest initially started as the original Total Conversion for ARK: Survival Evolved. It’s a game mode which puts places in a battle arena where they fight to the death. Since it’s inception in August 2015, it has undergone a lot of changes.

However, we are officially announce the hiatus of ARK: Survival of the Fittest. This means that there will be a halt in active development for the game mode whilst we consider our options for the game’s long-term direction. This also means that Survivor League will no longer run, for now. Please keep in mind that this may not be permanent, and there is active discussion surrounding the game mode’s future, including the possibility of a console port and development continuing, but for now we wanted to inform you that we would not be working on it plus no longer supporting it through competitive tournaments. The Official servers will remain online for the time being.

We understand that this may come as a disappointment to a number of you, Survival of the Fittest was a project we do love, but unfortunately, for now, it’s just not possible for us to scale up work on the title while also providing the necessary attention to ARK: Survival Evolved. However, we would like to give it a proper send-off: this winter we will be hosting two special matches to celebrate the game mode, as well as all who played it.

On Saturday the 17th of December at 11AM EST we would like to cordially invite the best SotF players to take part in an “All-Stars” 4-player-tribe game. The players will be invited based on their previous placements and accolades in Survivor League. This will be a standard 4-player match with the same settings as the October League, except the match timer will be scaled for 1.5 hours. All participants will be provided with a 20$ Steam Gift card, and the winning tribe will each receive a bonus 100$ Steam Gift card for their success! Following that match, we would like to host a final ~200-player Naughty vs Nice (to take place on The Island SotF Map) where the winning tribe’s players will receive a 50$ Steam Gift card (all hundred of them!).

In January, we will also release the Scorched Earth SotF source to the Survival of the Fittest Development Kit. The map environment itself is complete, however enterprising modders would need to add the dino-spawns, as well as make any other changes that they themselves deem necessary. We will also ensure all Survivors who have won over 200 SotF games in a set competitive game mode receive their Bionic Giga skin in ARK: Survival Evolved v253. Sorry, it took so long - we’re still waiting for our functionality from Valve but have managed to create our own workaround!

We’ll keep you informed should plans on SotF change next year, as we are still sourcing potential ways to give the game a substantial development outlook.