Holiday Bribe for Ark: Survival Evolved Redacted, Now We All Get Sheep
Controversy erupted on the Steam community page for Ark: Survival Evolved after developers seemed to be bribing players for their vote on the Steam Awards. On December 26th, associate producer Jat Karunakaran posted that if Ark won a specific category of award, they would release a mundane sheep with their next big patch.
Needles to say, gamers were not happy with this proposal. First of all, the award in question that Ark is gunning for goes to the game that “uses a farm animal in the best way possible.” It’s a bit of a stretch to categorize the dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts that can help you gather as, “farm animals.” Even the nomination for such an award would be much more legitimate if said sheep had already been made available. Secondly, bribes are never received well, especially in the gaming community! Studio Wildcard mentioned in an update that has since been deleted, “If Ark wins the award, we will ensure that our fluffy friend quickly makes its debut on the Ark in the next major version update!” Finally, Studio Wildcard should have been thanking their player base for the spurious nomination (gamers know theres no farm animals in Ark) and announced the sheep, called Ovis Aries, as a treat for all the support, not as a pay-off for a vote.
It only took one day for Studio Wildcard to recognize their miss-step as Reddit, Steam and Twitter were flooded with text-based images of extended middle fingers, and plenty of choice words for the studio. Yesterday, December 27th, Karunakaran attempted to make amends, posting, “We want to make it clear that regardless of whether Ark wins a Steam Award or not, Ovis will be making its debut in the next major Ark version update!” While this seemed to placate outraged gamers, we’ve got to wonder whether Ark’s chances for winning an award were helped or hurt by the debacle. If you fall into the category of people who would classify a T-Rex as a farm animal, why not head over to the Steam Awards site and show Ark some love? Or you could always cast your vote for Goat Simulator, if you’re into kidding around!