Gaming

Is Ark Dead? (2022)

July 28, 2021154

Is Ark dead in 2021? Are there still people that are actively playing it? How does it compare with other games of similar genre? Find out here!

Ark: Survival Evolved, also known as ARK is an open world action adventure survival game. It was first released in mid 2017 by Studio Wildcard for windows, Linux, macOS, Xbox One, and Ps4. Later in mid 2018, Ark was launched on iOS, Android and Nintendo switch. Recently in early 2021, ark became available for Stadia users as well.

The goal of this game is to survive in a dinosaur infested world by building bases, crafting weapons and tools, taming dinosaurs while also protecting yourself from the environment, hostile creatures and potentially not so friendly players that will absolutely obliterate your thatch/wooden base by the beach which took you hours to build within the next 12 hours of you being offline (multiplayer).

Table Of Contents hide

1. Ark Player Count

2. ARK twitch statistics

3. Ark vs Conan Exiles (stats)

4. Community opinion on Ark

5. Conclusion

6. Further Reading

Ark Player Count

When ark first launched, it had a total of 9 million players from all platforms (according to studio wildcard). At the time of writing this article, ark has 64k concurrent players in the game. However, there is another factor to consider here, this data is based solely on the steam version of the game. Ark’s player base is spread across multiple platforms and stores.

Ark reached its peak active players in march of 2020 which was when Genesis 2 DLC was added to the game. This major update caused the player count to skyrocket to 157k players which is almost double that the usual. That spike was short lived and the number quickly came down to its usual 70k by the end of july. Currently, ark has an average of 55k players every day as of recent statistics from steam charts.

ARK twitch statistics

It is fair to assume that the relevance of a game can be determined by its presence in the gaming media community. To check where ark stands in terms of relevance, we are taking Twitch stats as a reference. Twitch is one of the most popular streaming platforms with 2.9 million average concurrent viewers.

According to data provided by twitch tracker, Ark related streams on twitch were getting 2.5k average concurrent viewers through the year 2020. However, 2021 has been going well for ARK on twitch as view count has grown exponentially than previous years, hitting an average of 7.9k viewers. However this rapid growth in twitch views can be due to Ark’s newly released DLC.

Ark is ranked #68 among other titles on twitch which falls under the lower spectrum of the pool in context to the rest of the games in the platform. Although its view count isn’t really that high as compared to others, it’s definitely a progress for ark as it has doubled its number from the past year.

Ark vs Conan Exiles (stats)

Conan Exiles is another game similar to ark and they share the common theme of survival exploration, building and taming. They are however different in terms of graphics, in game mechanics, player base and game content. In this section, we will be focusing on the active player base of both of these games.

Ark vs Conan Steam Charts — ARK vs Conan viewer count (source)

Although these two games are similar in context to gameplay, they quite different in terms of relevance and active players. As per data of steam stats, Ark(green) has an average of 59k active players whereas Conan Exiles(blue) only has 10k . It is clearly visible in the graph above that these two games have a difference of heaven and earth with Ark being on the lead. Based on this comparison and Conan Exiles being the closest game similar to Ark, we can say that Ark is on the lead among other games belonging in the same category.

Read more in depth and overall comparison between Ark:Survival Evolved and Conan Exiles here!

Community opinion on Ark

The Ark community has divided opinion on the topic of whether the game is dead or not. Many believe that the pc version is dead with most servers being empty. Others however claim it’s only for pc versions and that the console servers are almost packed.

Most players of Ark through all platforms claim that the official servers are dead and empty and that they prefer playing in community (unofficial) servers which are better managed and moderated. Furthermore the community doesn’t seem to like the official servers as they are poorly managed and mostly dominated by alpha tribes which makes it impossible for new players to enjoy the game.

However not all reviews and opinions on ark are negative, there are old veteran players that still enjoy playing it. Especially returning players of ark have been enjoying this new update. There are also lots of positive reviews from newer players that have enjoyed playing ark.

Content Creator (Youtuber) Raasclark has given a detailed explanation as to why you should give Ark a try in 2021 in the following video.

Conclusion

Ark has had its ups and downs in its past few years but 2021 hasn’t let ark down considering it has maintained its active player base and has started growing on twitch at the same time. Ark is still holding strong and the player base hasn’t decreased to the point that the game dies. In conclusion, Ark is not dead!