ARK 2 could be our first confirmed game for 2028 after latest delay, as devs focus on an expansion for Survival Ascended first

Games take years to make, and for good reason, but even so, it’s a little jarring to see a game now targeting a 2028 release when we’re just about to tick over into 2026 – but that’s exactly what’s happened with ARK 2.

The game was originally revealed all the way back in 2020, at The Game Awards, with a surprise in-game appearance from Vin Diesel. It was slated for a 2023 release, but has shifted constantly. Now, developer Studio Wildcard has said the game will launch in 2028.

ARK 2 is coming in 2028, honest

Sharing an amended roadmap on the Epic Games Store (thanks, VGC), ARK: Survival Ascended is getting no fewer than seven major content updates in 2026 and 2027.

These include updates every quarter until Q2 2027, with Q4 2027 bringing the Legacy of Santiago update.

“One thing we learned is to not say goodbye until your players want you to,” Jeremy Stieglitz, Studio Wildcard co-founder, explained.

“To be honest with you, we kind of just hard-stopped updating ARK: Survival Evolved, and were like ‘OK, we’re done with it’. And actually, players were kind of mad about that, because they weren’t ready, they wanted more content at that point.”

“With ARK: Survival Ascended, we’ll keep working on it, even if it’s not the only thing we’re doing. We’ll keep working on making content for it as long as people still want to play it and pay for content, because we made that mistake with our transition from ARK: Survival Evolved.”

Stieglitz said ARK 2 will take more lessons from the prior game as a result of this delay and the additional content filling the gap. Legacy of Santiago will test out a series of mechanics for the sequel, he explained.

“Legacy of Santiago will allow us to explore a lot of mechanics that we want to do with ARK 2, but it kind of derisks that, ” he said.

“Essentially, if we don’t do it right, if we don’t do it perfectly, we’re able to iterate on it with a live game and get a lot more feedback than to just release something standalone. It’s much safer for us to get a lot of that feedback in a live game where we can react much more fluidly to what players are telling us.”