Summary

• Ark 2's development is plagued by delays and a lack of updates, with Ark: Survival Ascended seemingly taking precedence.
• Studio Wildcard and parent company Snail Games have a complex financial history that may complicatae Ark 2's future.
• Delays are not unusual for Studio Wildcard, but Ark 2's shifting status takes things to a new level.

Ark: Survival Ascended's continued development is giving Ark players a lot to care about, but when it comes to its successor Ark 2, it's a lot harder to be optimistic. Announced in 2020, Ark 2 is intended to be a major sequel to the classic Ark experience. In the years since its announcement, however, most updates on the game's status are simply its release date getting pushed farther and farther away, and a large portion of the community has essentially shelved any hopes for the game to release soon.

In the meantime, Ark: Survival Ascended was announced in March 2023 as a remaster of the original Ark: Survival Evolved, bringing the game to Unreal Engine 5 and slowly rebuilding all the content released over the years on the new platform. Although Survival Ascended suffered from its own delays, it did manage to materialize before the year's end, and it's continued to receive content additions since. The Summer Bash event recently added some new and old summer-themed items, and Aberration Ascended is set to expand the game more significantly in September.

The Ark 2 Delays Are Shadowed By Serious Problems

Studio Wildcard's Situation Doesn't Seem Great

Although Ark 2 has a huge audience ready and waiting, the apparent viability of its release is only continuing to falter. The overhauled Ark: Survival Ascended made sense as a way to bridge the extended gap between releases, but at this point, it seems to have taken over as the primary focus for development. Without any tangible progress being shown, it's hard to have confidence that much development is being invested in bringing Ark 2 to a completed state, and it may not be something that can wait forever.

Studio Wildcard, the company behind Ark, has a turbulent economic history. As reported by Kotaku, the studio made an allegedly $40 million dollar settlement in 2016 after being sued for a breach of a noncompete agreement, and the company sold to the parent publisher Snail Games somewhere in a similar time frame. Although most details of the arrangement are speculative, Ark lead designer Jeremy Stieglitz confirmed the basic events in a reply to a Reddit post on the subject, affirming that Wildcard viewed the partnership as a beneficial move.

Years later, however, it doesn't seem like all is well financially at Snail Games. Although shares in Snail Inc. opened at around $3.00 per share in 2022, they've trended downward to end up below a dollar in recent months. The basic rules of the market threaten delisting for any company with a share price that remains below a dollar for 30 days, and Snail Inc. has already been sitting there since early May.

A Bad Stock Situation Plagues The Ark 2 Publisher

Snail Inc. Could End Up Being Delisted

This doesn't necessarily mean that Snail Inc. is immediately set to be delisted, as some companies can work out agreements to buy time if they can make a convincing case for the share price recovery. At the moment, however, it's hard to see how Snail Games would be able to pull out of that hole. There's still no news on Ark 2, and although the publisher's recently released game Bellwright has attracted a fair amount of attention, any positive effect that it had on share value already seems to have dissipated.

The dire straits of Snail Inc. stock don't confirm that the company is in deep trouble, as a low share price isn't always directly tied to general financial viability. The fall of Snail Inc. stock does show a lack of confidence in the venture, however, and it can make it much more difficult for the publisher to raise money in the future. Depending on how much cash is being burned on Ark 2, this could be a significant setback or even fatal blow to development.

Although parent company troubles also don't always have to spell doom for subsidiaries, Wildcard's own financial history doesn't help matters. Wildcard or the Ark IP could always end up being sold to another party, but despite its significant potential for revenue, it might not be an attractive package considering all the baggage.

Further complicating things is the relationship between Snail Games and Marbis, the parent company behind Ark: Survival Ascended server provider Nitrado. 2023 SEC filings available from Snail also revealed multiple millions in debt to Marbis, and the company handed over long-term server exclusivity rights to Nitrado as part of a deal to cover past expenses. It's another consequence of long-running internal problems, even if it's one that was able to be more or less resolved without sinking the ship.

Ark's General Success Doesn't Mean Ark 2 Is Safe

It's An Unusual Situation Across The Board

Considering just how much has been invested into the IP, seeing Ark 2 fall apart at this point would be strange. In addition to the work on Survival Ascended, Ark: The Animated Series recently released, with a second part already confirmed for later in the year. Animated shows have been major successes for franchises like League of Legends, Cyberpunk, and Castlevania, so despite ultimately failing to garner a comparable reception, this was a big swing at attracting the same kind of hype.

For some perspective, Ark: The Animated Series was announced in the same year as Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, but it ultimately came out close to two years later than the other project.

For better or worse, Ark 2's constant delays aren't exactly out of the ordinary. The tradition of Studio Wildcard postponing releases was already in place during the era of continual DLC launches for the original Ark: Survival Evolved, and Survival Ascended has suffered the same fate. Even the animated series was knocked back from 2022 to 2023 to 2024, finally being released with a minimal amount of fanfare.

From an outside position, it's ultimately impossible to say what the odds of Ark 2 actually releasing as a finished product in a timely manner are. Based on the lack of information from Wildcard and concerning external factors, however, it doesn't seem wise to place too many eggs in that basket. Ark 2 has been anticipated for years as the future of a successful franchise, but it's hard to know for sure if that future will ever come.

Sources: Kotaku, Jeremy Stieglitz/Reddit, Snail