If you’re trying to play Ark Survival Evolved on an Xbox console or PC and you’re having some trouble with things like server connection and client authentication, you’re not alone – and Studio Wildcard is well aware of the issues. However, the solution to these issues isn’t exactly as easy as restarting your game – and you might find that you’re going to lose quite a lot of progress. In order to properly implement all the Ark server maintenance required, Studio Wildcard has announced that taking down the network and reverting everything – and everyone – back to an earlier save.
Yeah, we know that sucks – but, it sounds like it’s the only way. If you’re wondering how this is going to affect you, we have something that should help you work that out. On September 22, in an effort to explain the situation, Studio Wildcard issued the following statement on Twitter:
“Over the last few days we’ve been working with Microsoft on resolving the authentication exploit impacting our official Xbox network. We’ve currently got a fix in progress and are aiming to roll that out later this week.
“ Due to the impact that this has had on our network and to mitigate further exploitation we will be taking the Official Xbox/Windows Store network down temporarily to protect our players’ progress. We understand this is inconvenient but see it as a necessary to prevent further loss. The downtime should last until our client patch can be rolled out which we are targeting for Friday.”
So, what does this tell us so far? That, at the moment, you won’t be able to play Ark on Xbox or Windows PC – and that there’s no certain timeline for when the servers will be back up. That’s not all Studio Wildcard had to say, though – the statement continued with the following:
“Due to the high number of servers impacted on all networks (PvP, PvE, Smalls, etc), we will also be conducting a service-wide roll back of our saves to approximately Monday the 19th of September in order to undo any damage caused by these exploits.
“ A small minority of servers affected earlier will have their saves rolled back prior to Monday but we expect those to be minimal.”
What does this all mean for you? Well, it means that you’re probably going to lose quite a bit of progress in Ark if you played it in the last couple of days. We know this is one of the best Xbox survival games out there, and a big hitter on the Xbox Game Pass games list, but it’s certainly unfortunate that Studio Wildcard has had to effectively delete people’s saves to fix the game.
You can also find out more about the Ark 2 release date right here – if you’re just wanting to wait for the sequel.