Hello Survivors!

We’re super stoked to be announcing that this weekend starting from right now! (Thursday 10AM PST) through til Sunday 1PM PST - ARK will be available for everyone on Steam with some very cool updates to come! Including the highly anticipated DirectX 12 Support for Windows 10!

Throughout this free weekend there will be hundreds of new Official Servers featuring a one-time-only Extinction Event Meteor Impact, and special items to find randomly in supply crates! If you get your hands on one of these Strange Artifacts, you’ll find a steam code on it which can be redeemed for 50% off ARK: Survival Evolved, or in some cases, a free copy of ARK: Survival Evolved! Careful though, if someone kills you and takes your code, they’ll get the chance to use it first ;)

The Meteor Extinction Event servers will only be online from 12PM EST Thursday through 11:59PM EST Monday. The event will end with a gigantic meteor that comes crashing into the ARK on these servers specifically, destroying them at the end of Monday. Therefore, we recommend only playing on them if you are just trying the game out! We will be uploading and posting the save data from these servers later, for anyone to download who wishes to continue playing their character in singleplayer or re-hosting their data on their own Unofficial Server.

(Note: the Extinction Event will only occur on new 'Free Weekend' Servers. All previous Official Servers will never go Extinct!)

But that’s not all!

Survival of the Fittest: Unnatural Selection

Survivors will be provided with the opportunity to participate in the open “Unnatural Selection” Tournament! You’ll be battling in 4-player tribes against hundreds of other players for a chance to ride the Dragon and earn cash prizes! Similarly to our regular Survival of the Fittest mode, survivors will find themselves descending in dramatic fashion from the sky onto the ARK in a circular formation via beams-of-light! There will be a cache of valuable items in the centre and survivors will need to decide whether they do the dash for the loot and battle it out, or run into the jungle to begin their SotF experience! Gradually as the game progresses there will be a continually shrinking “ring of death” which forces contestants ever closer together over time and the question to ask is, Can anyone tame the Dragon and bend it to their will? ;)

This limited time ARK: Survival of the Fittest “Unnatural Selection” event will run from 6AM EST, Saturday August 29th through til 11pm EST, Monday August 31st with 24/7 open-preliminary matches on three 100-player Official Servers. When they open, these servers will be prefixed with "UnnaturalSelection" on the Official Servers list, simply join them to enter the tournament! The battle will last for 2.5 hours each and the winning tribes will advance to a Pre-Championship Tournament set to take place on September 1st at 10AM where contestants will again duke it out until we are down to the final 36 Tribes who will get placed into an epic 144-player Championship Match set to take place at 2:30PM EST and will be streamed on our SurvivetheARK Twitch Channel[www.twitch.tv]. The massive Championship battle will take place over the course of 4.5 hours and survivors will compete to win:

- Championship First Place Winning Team receives: $20,000 split 4 ways
- Championship Second Place Winning Team Receives: $10,000 split 4 ways
- Championship Third Place Winning Team Receives: $4,000 split 4 ways
- All 144 Players who make it into the Championship Match get a $100 Steam Gift Card!

In this special iteration of Survival of the Fittest: Unnatural Selection, survivors will get to witness distinct updates, most noticeably six new world changing Evolution Events and the first appearance of the Dragon! Midway through the match, the Dragon will become available for taming at the central platform. Beware as it can only be ridden for a short time before it turns on it’s master! Furthermore, the dragon will reappear during extended sudden death to eliminate all remaining survivors if they are not sufficiently murdering each other!

Good luck to all survivors and may the odds forever be in your favor!

Source: Jats Steam