Why did they take the official servers off the original ARK SE?

[Jinn]

My friend and I had the time of our lives in that game and after coming back from a long break, there were no official servers anymore. Everyone of us paid money for that game and now they are pushing us to pay again and get the new ascended?

[steventirey]

Because they want you to buy Ark Survival Ascended. Possibly, they didn't have the capability of hosting both Evolved and Ascended servers at the same time. There are always the unofficial servers. Apparently, there were always far more of those to choose from than there were official servers.

[Rich]

To move players to buy ASA? It's obvious. It's also not a major issue since you can still play ARK solo or host a server yourself using ASM.

[retsam1]

Originally posted by Jinn:

My friend and I had the time of our lives in that game and after coming back from a long break, there were no official servers anymore. Everyone of us paid money for that game and now they are pushing us to pay again and get the new ascended?

Financial reasons why has been discussed for over a year since they were shuttered. There are a multitude of videos and articles surrounding the financial issues Snail Games has faced and Ascended was/is meant to be their way of getting out of it.

March 2023-June 2023, Snail Games had even ended up owing in arrears to Nitrado a lot of money for the server hosting for ASE and was unable to pay(kited paying). Eventually it led to an agreement between Nitrado and Snail/WC that:

1. Gave them a cash infusion in the form loan.
2. Waved arrears server hosting that was owed.
3. Gave Nitrado exclusive Server hosting rights for official(and tried to do so with unofficial but that later got eased to a degree) for the next 3 years with essentially easy renewal options for them for the next 3+ after that giving them at least 6 years in all likelihood for Ascended.
4. Requires the repayment of the load to be in the form of 20% of revenue earned from ASA. Had ASA also not launched in October of 2023, they would've also taken revenue% from ASE sales too as a penalty but it released in Oct '23 so that didnt occur per the agreement.

So due to the monetary constraints and the intentions for ASA that october, it was more financially feesable to shut down the 1400ish official servers at the time and repurpose them to ASA official servers.

At the time though those servers shutting down affected a minority of the player base before and after shut down(for month after at least), unofficial servers were 70,000+ and through most of the lifetime of the game, unofficials have been where the majority of the player base chose to play.

All that said, Ascended hasnt been fairing well with ASE almost always having higher player concurrency consistently, mods on ASA having premium charged for ones, and other mtx too. Then there are the myriad of issues that ASE had that still exist(and were assured to be resolved but never were) with ASA... plus new ones that ASA created all on its own.

So while yes you paid for ASE, you got it and still can play on 30k+ unofficial servers, free mods etc or in single player with such.

No one is forcing you to buy ASA and there are plenty of caveat emtpors that have made many wary or just emphatically to get the game.