Ark: Survival Evolved has been breaking bones and boundaries for a couple of years now, but it surprised a lot of fans when game mode Survival of the Fittest, was spun off into its own PVP focused game and was made free to play. Around 12 months on though, we're in the strange situation of the games merging back together again.
Developer Wildcard was quick to announce that although the two games will become one again soon, anyone who has played Survival of the Fittest and downloaded its content before, will still be able to use that application to play it for free and they won't have to buy Survival Evolved. However moving forward, that's exactly what people will have to do in order to play the game mode.
But Wildcard isn't looking to just make money from people who want to play this once-upon-a-time free game mode. It merged the games because it's about to release the developer kit tools for the game, which would have meant there would need to be two separate kits, which would have just been messy.
We're also told (via VG247) that the move was also because of the current Ark business model, though exactly what that means is anyone's guess.
Unfortunately, this does mean that those waiting for Survival of the Fittest releases on Xbox One and PS4 will need to wait for now, while Wildcard figures out where it goes from here.
