Ark: Survival Evolved is a survival game created by Studio Wildcard where players start naked and must gather every resource they need to survive. This concept is common for survival games, but Ark adds dinosaurs that can be tamed and bred to pass down genes to make each dinosaur better.
There are over 100 creatures that players can tame and raise. Ark: Survival Evolved doesn’t have the best graphics, the animation isn’t impressive, and most of the gameplay feels simple, but multiplayer is its best feature.
This multiplayer has been a key component to the success of Ark: Survival Evolved. As players build their shelters and raise animals to fight with other players, they can directly impact the game world. The game world evolves as players build their territories or lose their fortunes, making it one of the most replayable games.
As a game heavily relying on multiplayer, you would think it would allow crossplay with friends with no restrictions, but there are several restrictions. As a result of strange crossplay restrictions, multiplayer has felt limited.
Is Ark: Survival Evolved cross-platform/crossplay?
Each platform has its own rules, and the cross-play only works on a few different platforms. You must ensure the servers are compatible with playing with your friends on different consoles.
Mobile users can crossplay Ark: Survival Evolved with each other just fine. If you are playing on PC, you can crossplay between Steam and Epic Games. You cannot crossplay with any other platform if you are playing Ark: Survival Evolved on a Mac or Nintendo Switch. You can cross-gen, so PlayStation 4 players can play with PlayStation 5 players, and the same goes for Xbox. Xbox users can crossplay Ark: Survival Evolved with PC users.
Will Ark: Survival Evolved‘s cross-platform eventually expand?
The cross-play functionality of Ark: Survival Evolved is needlessly complex. There are no plans for Studio Wildcard to simplify it and allow all platforms to play together, but it doesn’t seem very far-fetched.
There are already servers that support PC and Xbox users playing together, so it seems only a matter of time before PlayStation, Mac, or Nintendo Switch can play. Keep your hopes up and let the studio know you’d like it to expand to other platforms.
Still, at the moment, there are no plans to add cross-platform capabilities to Ark: Survival Evolved beyond what is already available.
With Ark 2 revealed and expected to come sometime next year, that could be players’ chance to participate in a world across all major consoles. If complete crossplay was unavailable in the first version of the game, this is Studio Wildcard’s chance to build that into the game from the ground up. If the goal is to bring more players together, this would certainly be the way.
Unfortunately, we don’t know much about Ark 2 outside of its coming release date sometime in 2023. The developer will likely give more information about crossplay and cross-progression as we get closer to the game’s full release.
