It is strange: In a time when the gaming press usually makes a scandal out of everything, an actual “scandal” surrounding ARK Survival Evolved goes almost completely unnoticed.
We have already reported on the complicated web surrounding “Studio Wildcard,” the company behind ARK Survival Evolved: The developer Jeremy Stieglitz was one of the founders of Studio Wildcard and the lead designer behind ARK Survival Evolved, but he concealed this for a long time. This was because he was bound by a contract to his former employer and would have had to pay them a share of his work if he had appeared openly as a developer.
Instead, he sent his wife, who owns a bakery, as a sort of “straw woman” to appear as a co-founder of the studio.
This became problematic when ARK Survival Evolved turned out to be a Steam hit and a multi-million dollar project.
Stieglitz even let himself be publicly denied by his partner, the other founder of Studio Wildcard. In an interview with the U.S. site Kotaku, Jesse Rapzack said: His college friend Stieglitz had only “consulted a little” on ARK.
Sold shares to Chinese developers
Later, the matter came to light, a lawsuit threatened, and it could only be settled after a large sum was paid. They speak of 40 million USD. The major U.S. gaming sites reported on this. After that, however, the topic was almost completely ignored.
Since then, Stieglitz has appeared openly as “Co-Founder and Lead Designer.” He has become the face of ARK alongside Rapczak. The fact that the studio previously lied brazenly about this seems to interest no one anymore.
It is quite astonishing – while the gaming press usually sees a scandal everywhere, this story has completely fallen flat in the media, presumably because everything was resolved behind closed doors and there are few official statements available.
The court document in which the sale of shares of Studio WildCard to Snail Games appears was found by fans and posted on reddit and imgur – the major gaming sites did not report on it at all, even though they usually absorb everything that gets “revealed” there.
This process has significant implications for the gaming landscape.
The ARK deal has enabled a Chinese studio to make a technological leap
The money that Studio Wildcard had to pay to settle the lawsuit likely came from the Chinese studio “Snail Games.”
The Chinese MMO specialist, known for second-tier grind MMOs like Age of Wushu, has apparently made a significant technological leap in a very short time and is now announcing MMORPGs with Unreal Engine 4 – the same engine that ARK uses.
These games are coming practically out of nowhere and reaching a larger audience than usual. They are also being noticed in the West. Sites like IGN are extensively reporting on Snail Games’ latest MMORPG: Dark and Light.
Games like Age of Wushu 2 or Dark and Light are strange MMORPGs that share only the name with their predecessors. Suddenly, Chinese MMOs are on “smaller servers”, they now offer “sandbox and survival elements.”
Asian-specialized MMORPG sites are astonished at where this trend shift is coming from. As the backstory surrounding ARK has hardly been covered in the media, no one can really explain it.
Most players of ARK Survival Evolved are quite indifferent to all this fuss. They mainly want better servers and a more developed technology for their dino MMO.
It seems that there are so many “imagined scandals and shitstorms” circulating in the gaming community that a real stunt like this with ARK goes almost completely unnoticed.
More background information can be found here:
ARK Survival Evolved: Is the studio owned by Chinese? Have they cloned ARK?
