Ark: Survival Evolved retail release date delayed

Studio Wildcard has announced that the retail release of its dino-hunting title Ark: Survival Evolved has been delayed until August 29th.

Originally set to launch next week on August 8th, the news of its delay was announced over the weekend. Studio Wildcard said the game had gone gold and had completed its certification for the retail release, but the whole process had taken longer than expected, resulting in its release date being pushed back another three weeks.

"We’re deeply apologetic for those who were negatively affected by the delay; it sucks, it wasn’t what we had wanted, nor planned but where we currently stand," the team said on its website."We wanted to address this sooner but did not want to make any statements until we were completely sure of what was going to happen."

As for what this means for the game’s future update schedule, Studio Wildcard said the free Ragnarok DLC will now also release on August 29th. The extra time will allow for further development of the map, and an even larger update than originally planned.

The team will also be increasing the size of the overground world by around a quarter – "which is near-enough a ‘Thelsland-sized’ expansion" according to the team. It will also feature new biomes, a coastal Wyvern canyon, "an epic boss encounter", new engrams and a currently unannounced secret. Likewise, the team will be adding custom creatures to the main game, which will allow players to transfer them to different biomes via the CrossARK system.

"Thank you so much for your patience the past few months and all the support! We will make sure that ARKs launch is a successful one and the game is in a healthy state. It’s going to be a hectic few weeks ahead, and we’re very excited! We still have a lot more planned for ARK, and even after release, the journey will continue!"

For more information about Ark’s retail release, read our in-depth interview withStudio Wildcard’s co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz