ARK: Survival Of The Fittest Abandons Free-To-Play

Last week Studio Wildcard chose to take their King of the Hill battle mod ARK: Survival of the Fittest and return it to a game mode within ARK: Survival Evolved, meaning it's no longer a standalone free-to-play title. Although players who previously played Survive of the Fittest will still own the game and be able to play it without purchasing Survival Evolved.

Wildcard stated that they primarily retracted SotF to ease the release of the Development Kit, to allow modders to use Survival Evolved's content without restrictions. "We do not want to place any restrictions on you, this community has provided a lot of feedback in regards to SotF and there are a number of you who have expressed a desire to work on the game mode itself and take it to a new place." But Wildcard also chose to retract Survival of the Fittest for financial reasons:

When a game like SotF is made free to play, there are still expenses - this can range from development work, server costs, running of tournaments, prizes and of course the opportunity cost. To ensure that SotF would remain a success and a sound choice, Wildcard would have had to put a lot of resources and time into learning how to become a ‘free to play’ developer. We would have had to learn how to monetize a free game, notoriously through the use of in-app purchases such as skins and other cosmetics.

Monetizing a free-to-play game is not easy. The studio writes, "We don’t know much about monetization, and quite frankly we aren’t interested in hiring an economics team to take over that process, it is much more in our and your best interest for Wildcard to solely focus on the development of a game. We just aren’t cut out for free to play mechanics." We take the free-to-play model for granted, but creating a fair and stable system is no easy task.

What do you think of Studio Wildcard's decision to abandon the free-to-play model for ARK: Survival of the Fittest?