ARK: Survival Evolved
Stranded on the shores of a mysterious island, you must learn to survive. Use your cunning to kill or tame the primeval creatures roaming the land, and encounter other players to survive, dominate... and escape!
MMORPGOpen WorldRole-PlayingSandboxSurvival
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- Released
- 2017
- Developer
- Studio Wildcard
- Platforms
- 1 systems
- Critics
- 70
- Steam Deck
- verified
- Download
- 60 GB
What is ARK: Survival Evolved?
Stranded on the shores of a mysterious island, you must learn to survive. Use your cunning to kill or tame the primeval creatures roaming the land, and encounter other players to survive, dominate... and escape!
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 26 August 2017 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Efecto Studios, Virtual Basement LLC |
| Publisher | Studio Wildcard, Snail Games USA |
| Platforms | PC |
| Genres | MMORPG, Open World, Role-Playing, Sandbox, Survival |
| Languages | 21 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata , seeded TBA. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was ARK: Survival Evolved received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Metacritic page. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
None declared
Hearing
None declared
Input
- Full controller support
Difficulty
None declared
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | full support |
| Cloud saves | Yes |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | Steam Workshop |
| Online play | Yes |
| In-game purchases | No |
| Steam Deck | verified |
| Download size | 60 GB |
| Add-on content | 18 DLC listed |
| Age gate | None |
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is ARK: Survival Evolved worth it?
83% of 776,582 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. It costs $9.89 on Steam, on sale from $14.99, and critics score it 70/100. About 22,170 people were playing at once when we last checked, so it is still active.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. Players do report problems — see the reported-problems section below before buying. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is ARK: Survival Evolved? How long to beat it
Total play time for ARK: Survival Evolved is about 920.3 hours to do everything, and around 67 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 67h | 50 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 313.7h | 37 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 920.3h | 33 |
At its current price of $9.89, beating the main story works out to about $0.15 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
ARK: Survival Evolved system requirements
The minimum requirements from ARK: Survival Evolved's Steam page. These are what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings.
| Memory | 8 GB RAM (other games at this level) |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GTX 670 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB · runs on a low-end GPU |
| Storage | 60 GB (more games this size) |
| System | 64-bit OS required |
Can your PC run it? Check ARK: Survival Evolved against your exact GPU, CPU and RAM.
Where ARK: Survival Evolved sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueARK: Survival Evolved plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- PC
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Is ARK: Survival Evolved still active? Players right now
ARK: Survival Evolved has a healthy, active player base: 22,170 people were playing at once when we last read Steam on 19 October 2026. This is a snapshot, not a live counter, and it is a recent concurrent reading rather than an all-time record. For what is trending across the catalogue right now, see the pulse.
How many people own ARK: Survival Evolved
This is an estimate, not a sales figure, and the two are not interchangeable. SteamSpy samples public profiles and publishes a range; the range here spans a factor of 2.5, and that width is the honest part of it. We show both ends rather than a midpoint, because a midpoint would look like a measurement.
Steam only. Console and storefront sales are not counted, so a game that sold heavily elsewhere reads low here. Read on 19 October 2026. Where a publisher has announced a real unit figure, that appears separately and carries its source.
Estimated sales for ARK: Survival Evolved
These are estimates, not reported figures. Studio Wildcard has not published unit sales for ARK: Survival Evolved, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 776,582 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | $14.99 |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
| SteamSpy owner estimate | 20M–50M, a different measure, see below |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If Studio Wildcard publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
ARK: Survival Evolved price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $9.89 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest ARK: Survival Evolved updates & patch notes
Pulled from ARK: Survival Evolved's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
What readers say about ARK: Survival Evolved
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Problems players report
We read the 299 most recent negative Steam reviews of ARK: Survival Evolved on 14 September 2026 and counted what they mention. These are complaints, not confirmed defects: we have not reproduced any of them, and a review describes one person's machine. What the counts tell you is which problems more than one person ran into.
- Crashes and freezes38 of 299 (13%)
But I simply can't keep dealing with these game-breaking bugs, especially when I can't even get past the main menu because it freezes almost every time I boot the game up.
Steam review, 11 August 2026 · 167 hours played · 125 readers marked it helpfulThe menu lags and when I try to run a dedicated server it crashes immediately.
Steam review, 31 July 2026 · 1 hours played · 4 readers marked it helpful - Performance and stutter16 of 299 (5%)
unoptimized slog, 222GB download will prevent me from ever considering installing it again
Steam review, 10 September 2026 · 20 hours played · 3 readers marked it helpfulThe is so unoptimized needs 5 mins to load into the game
Steam review, 5 August 2026 · 53 hours played · 2 readers marked it helpful
A further 12 reviews call the game buggy or broken without saying how, which is why they are counted separately rather than assigned to a theme. Counted by keyword across review text, so a review discussing two problems is counted under both. Read the reviews yourself.
ARK: Survival Evolved mods
ARK: Survival Evolved supports Steam Workshop, and the 20 most-installed mods have 45,787,527 subscribers between them. The most installed is Awesome SpyGlass!.
Did it run on your PC?
Tell other players how it ran on your machine. One tap, from your saved PC if you have one.
Where ARK: Survival Evolved appears
The ranked lists and finder pages ARK: Survival Evolved qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
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Games like ARK: Survival Evolved
24 games overlap with ARK: Survival Evolved on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are ARK: Survival Ascended, ARK: Survival Of The Fittest and Satisfactory.
Part of the ARK series
ARK: Survival Evolved is one of 3 ARK games we track. See the whole series ranked by the GamingPickz Score, plotted on the grid, and listed in release order:
ARK: Survival Evolved head to head
See ARK: Survival Evolved compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
More ARK: Survival Evolved comparisons: vs Assassin's Creed 2, vs The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition Deluxe (2009), vs Fallout: New Vegas, vs Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition, vs DRAGON BALL FighterZ, vs Mass Effect Legendary Edition, vs Mount & Blade: Warband, vs Yakuza 0, vs Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, vs Risen, vs State of Decay, vs The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, vs Torchlight II, vs Watch Dogs, vs ArcheAge, vs Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition, vs Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, vs Dungeon Siege, vs ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN, vs EverQuest II, vs Gothic 1, vs Heaven Island Life, vs Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, vs Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, vs Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, vs Might & Magic: Heroes VI, vs NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM 4, vs Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition, vs Prototype, vs RuneScape , vs SoulWorker - Anime Action MMO, vs South Park: The Stick of Truth, vs Squad, vs The Lord of the Rings Online, vs The Surge 2, vs Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, vs Two Worlds Epic Edition, vs Wasteland 3, vs Z1 Battle Royale
Common questions about ARK: Survival Evolved
What platforms is ARK: Survival Evolved on?
ARK: Survival Evolved is available on PC. It first released in 2017.
How much does ARK: Survival Evolved cost?
$9.89 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend ARK: Survival Evolved?
83% of 776,582 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
What is the Metacritic score for ARK: Survival Evolved?
70 out of 100 for the PC version, as published on the game's own Steam store page. Steam can lag Metacritic by a few points.
Does ARK: Survival Evolved work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates ARK: Survival Evolved as verified on the Steam Deck, from its own testing. That means it works out of the box with no configuration.
How big is the ARK: Survival Evolved download?
60 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.
Who made ARK: Survival Evolved?
ARK: Survival Evolved was developed by Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Efecto Studios, Virtual Basement LLC and published by Studio Wildcard, Snail Games USA.
Is ARK: Survival Evolved worth it in 2026?
83% of 776,582 Steam reviews are positive (Very Positive), and it is $9.89 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is ARK: Survival Evolved dead?
No. About 22,170 people were in-game at once when we last read Steam's concurrent-player figure. Peak activity is higher; this is a recent snapshot, not the all-time peak.
Is ARK: Survival Evolved on sale?
Yes, right now. ARK: Survival Evolved is $9.89 on Steam, down from its $14.99 list price (about 34% off), read on 30 August 2026. Prices move, so check the store.