Note: Crossplay has been disabled for Windows 10 users, not all PC players. This article has been updated to reflect that.
Studio Wildcard has yoinked PvP crossplay for Windows 10 users of Ark: Survival Ascended, its recently released remaster of Ark: Survival Evolved. The reason is that a whole lot of gamers on Windows 10 have been put on the naughty list for cheating, with hacks letting them do everything from move like The Flash to blowing away console players through walls.
The game’s players have been in open revolt about this since the November 21 launch, and Studio Wildcard says it made the decision to “temporarily disable the Windows client” while it works to “implement robust anti-cheat measures.” Ark: Survival Ascended uses the popular anti-cheat BattlEye software but it’s clearly not doing the job, with the developer saying it’ll be collaborating with both BattlEye and Microsoft on the fix, and expects to restore crossplay to the Windows version by “early next week.”
“We apologize to our Windows players but we feel this is the best course of action for the health of the game… Rest assured, your single-player experience and private servers that haven’t disabled Windows clients from joining remain unaffected. We’re committed to resolving this issue swiftly.”
It caps an inauspicious launch for Ark: Survival Ascended, which was intended as a straight replacement of 2014’s Ark: Survival Evolved but has left many players cold. Mixed messages in the runup to release initially suggested it would be a free upgrade for existing owners, but then it turned out to come with a price tag, and the decision to close the earlier game’s official servers when the new one launched was highly unpopular.
The fact it also seems to be repeating Ark’s early access history with glitches, bugs, and optimization issues hasn’t helped, with the game’s Steam reviews stuck firmly on ‘mixed‘. As PCG’s Christopher Livingston observed of the latest game’s launch: “Time is a flat circle covered with dinosaurs.”