Almost 1,000 ‘ARK: Survival Evolved’ Servers Being Taken Down And Repurposed For Official Launch

Studio Wildcard previously promised it would take down low population ARK: Survival Evolved official servers and re-purpose them for the official launch of the game due next week. The makers of the open-world survival game have published the hit list of the PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 servers that will be taken down, and the number comes close to 1,000.

Servers Going Away

There are currently 2,915 official servers hosted by Studio Wildcard, according to a Twitter post by Community Manager Jen. The combined totals of the PC, Xbox One, and PS4 servers that will be deleted at 12 a.m. ET on August 29 numbers 961. The number of PC servers being shut down is 483, the Xbox One server count is 304, and the remaining 174 are PS4 servers.

This represents 33 percent of the existing ARK: Survival Evolved servers that will be taken down and repurposed by Studio Wildcard. That is significantly more than the 10 percent of servers the developer originally stated it was taking down. There has been no word on why more servers are being taken down than originally promised, but it is likely the studio found a higher number of low activity servers than originally anticipated.

Save files for the servers being deleted will be made available to download later this week. This will allow players to retain their ARK: Survival Evolved content from the server they played on to play locally or host on a private server.

Legacy Servers

The surviving official servers for ARK: Survival Evolved will be converted to “Legacy” servers. These will retain all the tribes, characters, tamed dinosaurs, bases, and items that are there today. Additionally, existing clusters will see the Ragnarok map added to them plus receive all future new content and enhancements, like the promised changes to prevent duping, DDoS attacks, and exploits.

Do not expect any customer support from Studio Wildcard on the Legacy ARK: Survival Evolved servers, however. The customer support team will wipe out all outstanding tickets for these servers and will not accept any new support tickets for these servers going forward. Only the new servers will receive customer support after the official launch.

“Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of our operation to continue to offer support on Legacy servers at this time,” Studio Wildcard explained.

New Servers

Fresh servers will go live across all three platforms on August 29. This will be the place to start for any new players who pick-up ARK: Survival Evolved, as they will not contain any existing tribes and servers to contend with. However, new players should expect a gold rush-like atmosphere on the new servers as players and major tribes flood the new servers to try to be the first to get to valuable plots of land.

How many new PvP and PvE servers will be created has not been confirmed yet. However, servers will be created for all four maps – The Island, The Center, Scorched Earth, and Ragnarok. Standard modes will be supported first, and servers for alternate modes like “Primitive” and “Hardcore” will be spun up later.

[Featured Image by Studio Wildcard]