The openness of PC gaming allows anyone to contribute, from modders, Twitch streamers, and two-man dev teams to the biggest game studios in the world. But with no real regulator at the helm to set and enforce standards, it also means that everyone has shared ownership of the platform, opening the door to abuse, troublemakers, and scandal.

Pour a glass of dramamine and revisit the finest flubs that graced PC gaming this year. From least-most controversial to most-most controversial, these are the stories that drew the greatest negative reaction from the PC gaming community in 2016.

ARK: Scorched Earth

The pressure on Steam's Early Access program has only increased since its introduction in March 2013. Although Early Access has yielded excellent games like Darkest Dungeon, Don't Starve, Offworld Trading Company, Subnautica, Divinity: Original Sin, Infinifactory, RimWorld, and Kerbal Space Program, some PC gamers remain reluctant to buy into unfinished games and the uncertainty that the Early Access label sometimes carries.

In September, Studio Wildcard dealt a blow to Early Access' reputation when it released Scorched Earth, the first paid expansion for Ark: Survival Evolved. At $20, it was two-thirds the cost of the base game. Many fans were unhappy to see a game that was by definition unfinished getting post-release content. On the third most-popular post on the Ark subreddit ever, one fan criticized: "We paid for the developers to finish Ark: Survival Evolved, instead they took our money and made another game with it." Studio Wildcard defended its decision saying that implementing an expansion early would make the technical process easier for future expansions.

More reading: Ark: Survival Evolved dev responds to paid expansion controversyValve must take greater ownership over Steam's Early Access program

Nostalrius

Vanilla WoW (that is, a pre-expansion version of World of Warcraft) has remained a popular way to play the most popular MMO of all time. As Angus wrote in April, "Nostalrius is a time capsule: a beautifully nostalgic record of what a living world used to look like. It's a museum piece created by passionate fans with no official alternative." 

But it's against WoW's terms of service to operate an independent game server, even if that server takes no money from its community. In April Blizzard issued a cease-and-desist against Nostalrius, WoW's biggest vanilla server, which boasted 150,000 active players. The forecast was grim: Blizzard had shut down other vanilla servers before, and it felt unlikely that the internet petition that sprung up in response was going to reverse the action against Nostalrius.

The server owners complied, shutting down Nostalrius in April, but the fight wasn't done. Shortly after, they managed a face-to-face meeting with Blizzard to press their case for the value of vanilla WoW. "After this meeting, we can affirm that these guys WANT to have legacy WoW servers, that is for sure," wrote a Nostalrius admin.

The story continued to develop as members of the Nostalrius team, seemingly uncontent with Blizzard's lack of discussion about the issue at BlizzCon, announced their plans to bring back the server under a new banner, Elysium. Barring some change of heart by Blizzard, Elysium itself stands a decent chance of also getting shut down. But the resurrection of Nostalrius puts greater pressure on Blizzard to permit vanilla servers, lest it be embroiled in another battle with a big piece of the WoW community.

More reading: Inside the WoW server Blizzard wants to shut down

Blizzard's buttroversy

Debate about the portrayal of videogame butts came to a head in 2016 when, in a lengthy post on the Battle.net forums, player Fipps complained about a victory pose for Tracer, Overwatch's speedy and spunky attacker.

“I have a young daughter that everyday when I wake up wants to watch the Recall trailer again," Fipps wrote. "She knows who Tracer is, and as she grows up, she can grow up alongside these characters. What I'm asking is that as you continue to add to the Overwatch cast and investment elements, you double down on your commitment to create strong female characters. You've been doing a good job so far, but shipping with a tracer pose like this undermines so much of the good you've already done.”

Blizzard agreed, and promised to amend the pose. “We want *everyone* to feel strong and heroic in our community. The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented,” game director Jeff Kaplan wrote. 

Then came criticism that Kaplan was caving to criticism, or worse 'censoring' Overwatch in response to a complaint. "We understand that not everyone will agree with our decision, and that’s okay," he wrote in a second update. "That’s what these kinds of public tests are for. This wasn’t pandering or caving, though. This was the right call from our perspective, and we think the game will be just as fun the next time you play it."

Lost in the pile of this was how civil the original critique was. "My main complaint is that there is no facet of Tracer's silly/spunky/kind personality in the pose. It's just a generic butt shot. I don't see how that's positive for the game," wrote Fipps in the original post. I continue to agree that the pose wasn't Blizzard's best. Really, the reaction to the reaction was bigger, as it fed into a wider conversation around sexualized characters, feminism, inclusiveness, player criticism and other issues in games.

More reading: Overwatch victory pose cut after fan complains that it's over-sexualized

Microsoft's UWP

Microsoft's latest courtship of PC gaming continues to be a mixture of good and bad. We loved Forza Horizon 3, liked Gears 4, and found Halo 5: Forge to be surprisingly great. But on the operating system side, things weren't all blue skies and green fields for PC gamers in 2016. 

In March, Microsoft asserted its plan to bring its biggest games to Windows through its Universal Windows Platform, a set of standards and restrictions meant to, in Microsoft's eyes, make it easier to publish applications across multiple Windows devices, improve security, and help developers write code under a more unified platform. Those modest benefits are outweighed massively by the danger of Windows becoming more of a closed platform.

Among game companies, Epic Games CEO and co-founder Tim Sweeney was the most outspoken critic of UWP. In March, Sweeney labeled the initiative "a closed, Microsoft-controlled distribution and commerce monopoly," and called for others in the industry to oppose it. Sweeney didn't miss the opportunity to level more harsh words later in 2016. "Slowly, over the next five years, they will force-patch Windows 10 to make Steam progressively worse and more broken," he warned in July.

More reading:Epic CEO Tim Sweeney pummels Microsoft's UWP initiativePhil Spencer on Microsoft's PC plans: "I wouldn’t say our strategy is to unify"

CS:GO skin gambling

The stage for 2016's skin gambling debacle was set three years earlier, when Valve rolled out cosmetic microtransactions for CS:GO. These items could be traded, sold, and bought through Steam for as much as $400—the maximum listing price on the Steam Community Market. It didn't take long for questionable, unlicensed third-party websites to realize they could use Steam bot accounts to automate item winnings and losings, and it didn't take long for dozens of flavors of skin gambling to spring up as CS:GO peaked in popularity.

The lowest point so far in a story that continues to develop, though, was the revelation that two very popular YouTubers showed themselves winning thousands of dollars of items on a site called CSGO Lotto without mentioning or indicating in any way that they were the creators of CSGO Lotto. Oops. Exposed, TmarTn offered a pitiful apology, saying that his relationship with had been "been a matter of public record since the company was first organized in December of 2015," presumably meaning that a public record existed of his co-ownership of the shady gambling website for someone else to uncover.

There's no definitive verdict on the legality of in-game item gambling at this time, but you can expect the issue to continue to be explored in 2017.

More reading:YouTuber owner of CS:GO betting site offers worst apology ever CS:GO’s controversial skin gambling, explained

No Man's Sky

It was a perfect, ugly storm of some of the least-appealing trends in modern gaming: unchecked hype, unfinished games, last-minute review code, bland procedural generation, and misleading marketing.

Before that, though, heavy, sincere anticipation had formed around No Man's Sky. Here was a game from a small studio with an impossible promise: 18 quintillion planets, procedurally-generated wildlife, infinite exploration. In trailers, it looked like a massive step forward for the stagnating survival genre. To help Hello Games achieve these lofty designs, it had the backing of a major publisher in Sony. And No Man's Sky was delightfully mysterious, so much so that we were still answering fundamental questions about the game a month before launch, thanks to limited access to code. At a preview event, Chris was allowed to play for less than an hour. 

Concerning signs came in the days before release. A significant day-one patch was on the way to fix major exploits. The PC release date itself wasn't announced until very late. A player who acquired a leaked copy of the game was able to reach the center of this allegedly near-infinite galaxy very quickly. And in a strange move, Hello Games wrote a blog warning players about the game one day before its launch on PlayStation 4. "This maybe isn’t the game you *imagined* from those trailers," wrote Sean Murray in a blog post that outlined, from his perspective, what the space game was and was not. "I expect it to be super divisive."

It was more than that. But initially, No Man's Sky became the biggest launch on Steam of 2016, hitting 212,620 concurrent players on PC. That's more than double the all-time peak of 2015 phenomenon Rocket League. In short order, the mystery unraveled. Two players, livestreaming simultaneously on launch day, could not see one another despite reaching the same location. The limitations of the game's procedural generation were revealed, as players shared screens and video of samey-looking aliens. And the hope that somewhere, cool, custom snake monsters were prowling the universe, disappeared. Players urged other players to seek refunds, and No Man's Sky's concurrent players sunk. Hello Games went quiet.

Our reviewer, Chris Livingston, recaps the rest of the saga perfectly in our lows of the year:

And then there was the reaction to the reaction: Hello Games went utterly silent for a couple of months. While I understand the reasoning—when everything you've ever said is suddenly under intense scrutiny, it makes sense to be careful saying anything else—the impenetrable silence only made matters worse, as fans felt they had been completely abandoned and ignored. At least things have gotten better recently, with new features added in the Foundation update, and the promise of more changes to come in the future.

There are lessons to be learned on all sides. Devs: keep in mind that no one ever forgets what you say during development, and while it's fine to talk about the elements you hope to put in your game, you're going to hear about it if those things aren't actually there when you release it. Plus, completely shutting off all communication with the people who have bought your game is a terrible idea. As customers, we need to remain skeptical of early E3 trailers, bullshots, pre-launch hype, and be especially cautious about pre-ordering games. And, we need to be patient. Even if developers aren't talking, they're listening, and adding new features to a game takes time.

Ultimately, it was a pleasantly chill, but underwhelming neon planet generator that became the poster child of many of the things we dislike. The lingering thought is how differently things would've gone if No Man's Sky had released in Early Access as a $20 or $30 beta.

More reading: The anatomy of hypeFive reasons game marketing can be misleading

Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard has clarified that the Ovis Aries—better known to the world as "sheep"—will be coming to the game in its next major update, regardless of whether or not it takes the prize for "Best Use of a Farm Animal" in the ongoing Steam Awards. The announcement was made following a wave of criticism over the original Ovis Aries reveal, which implied that the wool-bearing beasts would be added to the game only if Ark wins the award. 

"We were encouraged by Valve to rally the Community to come together and vote in the upcoming Steam Awards. We thought what better way to do this than add a modern-day farmyard animal! In our excitement, Ovis Aries was designed as a celebration of the nomination," the studio said in the "re-announcement" of the sheep. "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!" 

The original announcement, which has since been deleted but can be seen through the Wayback Machine, is somewhat more open to interpretation. "Head over to http://store.steampowered.com/SteamAwards/ on Thursday the 29th of December, as you’ll have the opportunity to come show your support for Ark by voting for us!" it said. "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!" 

That could be taken to mean that winning the award would spur the studio to ensure that the sheep arrive with all possible quickness, but many players read it as an all-or-nothing proposition: No prize, no sheep. A flurry of negative feedback blew in, both on and off Steam, as gamers shared their outrage over the attempted "bribery," leading Wildcard to pull the initial announcement and issue the update.   

A date for the update hasn't been announced, but voting for the Steam Awards' "Best Use of a Farm Animal" will begin later today. Ark: Survival Evolved is up against some major rural competition: Goat Simulator, Stardew Valley, Blood and Bacon, and Farming Simulator 17. 

There's no place like home for the holidays, and if you've made a home on Ark: Survival Evolved's incredibly dangerous dinosaur-filled island, here's a present for you. Patch 253 has arrived, and with it some new dinosaurs, some new locations, and a new item: the camera. Plus, you might catch a glimpse of Raptor Claus as he flies above the island dropping presents for the next week as part of Ark's second annual Winter Wonderland event.

The patch, which is now live, adds two new underwater caves containing artifacts and challenges. You may find an additional peril in visiting them, however, due to some dangerous new sea creatures like the Cnidaria Omnimorph (a large glowing jellyfish) and the fearsome Tusoteuthis Vampyrus, a giant squid capable of grabbing you with its crushing tentacles and sucking the blood out of you.

There are a few new land-based dinos as well, such as a T-Rex-sized herbivore called Therizinosaurus Multiensis that promises to be useful for harvesting greens, and the Troodon Magnanimus, which may be a bit smaller than a raptor but is reportedly much smarter.

If you spot one of the new dinos (or Santa), you can now snap a photo. A camera has been added to Ark, allowing you to take pictures and apply the image to an in-game canvas, for a lovely keepsake of your adventures.

In less joyful news, Studio Wildcard has confirmed that the sci-fi themed TEK Tier update has been delayed until patch 254, which is currently planned for January. So those lasers you were planning to mount on your T-Rex's head? You're gonna have to wait a little longer for 'em.

For those who aren't playing but want to, though, there is good news in that Ark is currently part of the Steam Winter sale and can be had for $12.

As an Ark player, I'm still new and more than a bit of a disaster. The island of Ark is a dangerous place, and even simple tasks often result in a horrible death. I've been bitten by everything with teeth. I've been poisoned repeatedly. I've fallen off cliffs, drowned, starved, and drowned while starving after falling.

This isn't some heavily populated PvP server I'm on, either. A friend invited me to play on a private server, where the few players around are all extremely friendly. I joined my friend's camp on Herbivore Island, where nothing hurts you unless you hurt it first. And still: death. Death, for me, all the time. That's why it's important to have a trusty mount, and I have a few, mostly gifts from the server admin who has tamed just about every creature in the game. I have a T-Rex, and Argentavis (like a giant eagle), and I even tamed my own (low-level) Megalodon. The Rex can kill anything in its way and the eagle can cruise safely above danger. But I recently found something even better, and it's a damn frog.

The nice thing about riding a giant eagle is you can pick up smaller creatures in the eagle's talons. You can them drop them from great heights (though they don't seem to take fall damage), shred them to ribbons, or carry them somewhere, such as a taming pen like the one we built on our peaceful little island.

I'd already had several misadventures in the Gulch of Lamentation (a swamp whose name should have tipped me off), which is teeming with nasty creatures like Titanoboas (huge snakes) and Sarcos (crocodiles). However, during one of the many, many times I was dying horribly in the swamp, I noticed a multitude of Beezelbufos (big frogs) hopping around, and decided I wanted one as a pet. I returned on the eagle, picked up a pretty white toad, dropped it at our base, punched it unconscious, and stuffed it with raw meat, thus ensuring it would love me forever. I hadn't really planned on riding my frog, but saddling dinos makes them easy to move around in case they get in the way of anything, so I crafted a saddle for her and named her Electra.

Hopping around on Electra was briefly fun and silly, but just seemed like something to do in moments of boredom. She could really leap though, and since every time I venture into the water I seem to get feasted on by angry dino-fish, being able to jump across rivers seemed like it could be useful. So, anytime Electra could be leveled, I put all her points into movement speed. Before long, she was over 400% speed.

Now, her leaps give her some major hangtime. And she's fast. So fast. So fast that when I accidentally let her wander rather than stay where I parked her, I could only catch her when she ran into a boulder and got stuck.

So, when we run into trouble (which is every time we leave our base), we're a half an island away by the time most dinos have even managed to turn around. Nothing can catch us. Nothing can even come close. It's like I'm visiting a zoo. I can look at all the pretty monsters, and none of them can hurt me.

What's more, Electra can eat bugs. What's even more, is that when she eats a bug she harvests cementing paste, which is a craftable item made from stone and either chitin or keratin. Most items in Ark don't take long to craft, but cementing paste seems to take twice as long as everything else, leading to long boring minutes standing at a crafting bench, so having a shortcut is a real blessing. And with her movement speed, I can scour the jungle and swamp for bugs, eat them, and be back home with a pocket full of paste within minutes.

Beyond her usefulness, she has an odd quirk, in that sometimes when I spawn into the game she's not where I left her. I've now found her on my roof, and on top of the taming pen, which is so tall I'm not even sure how she managed to get up there. One time I found her sitting at the bottom of the lagoon. I don't know if there's a glitch with how she spawns, or if she's got a mind of her own when no one is around, but it gives her a bit of a personality.

Mainly, though, it's Electra's speed that makes her supremely useful to me. Everything in Ark scares me, but now I feel confident riding her just about anywhere. Anything comes close, we can just speed off. We've hopped through crowds of dangerous dinos. The swamp, my biggest nightmare, is now a breeze to navigate. And Electra has opened up the ocean, too.

Electra is a great swimmer. She's not as fast as she is on land, but we've yet to encounter anything underwater we can't speed away from. Best of all, swimming doesn't drain her stamina: in fact, if she's exhausted from land-travel, which requires stopping to recharge, we can just head into the water and she'll regain stamina even while swimming.

I'd been trying to locate an underwater cave for a while, by riding my shark while wearing scuba gear (another gift), but caves are guarded by Plesiosaurs that are a little too dangerous for me to tackle with my somewhat wimpy shark. On Electra, we breeze right past, and I finally managed to find the cave.

There's one small drawback: all that fast-hopping means Electra needs food. A lot of food. Noticing her belly was empty during an extended hop-about, I stuffed her full of dead gator meat and she tore through it, consuming about 1 meat per second. She fully consumed a couple bellyfuls of dead dodo before we got home. My girl can eat.

The beezelbufos aren't breedable, unfortunately, or believe me I'd be busy creating a genetic line of superfrogs. Even still, it's hard to imagine a better mount for the cautious or new Ark player. Find a frog, tame it, cram as many points into movement speed as will fit, and nothing on the map will be able to touch you.

This month, we sent Ross Geller apologist James Davenport into the prehistoric techno world of Ark: Survival Evolved. He returned not with dino fossils, but with loads of exclusive information on the game's new Tek Tier, and where the Early Access-dwelling survival sandbox is heading in future.

Speaking of the future, Samuel spent a few hours with The Creative Assembly's Halo Wars 2 the follow-up to 2009's RTS slant on the enduring sci-fi universe. Elsewhere inside, Phil delivers his verdict on Battlefield 1 which might be the best multiplayer shooter of the year; while Tom Senior explores the origins of Company of Heroes on the tenth anniversary of its release.

Previews this month include The Signal from T lva, For Honor, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, and many more.

Issue 287 is on shelves now and available on all your digital devices from Google Play, and the App Store (they may be slow to update look for the laser-shooting dinos on the front). You can also order direct from My Favourite Magazines or purchase a subscription to save money, and receive monthly deliveries.

This month: 

• James offers exclusive insights into Ark: Survival Evolved's new Tek Tier.
• Samuel spends a few hours in The Creative Assembly's Halo Wars 2.
• Tom Hatfield gathers the 20 best mods for some of the best-ever PC games.
• Phil delivers his verdict on Battlefield 1.
• Tom Senior explores how classic RTS Company of Heroes was made.
• Battlefield 1, Shadow Warrior 2, FIFA 17, Civ 6, and more reviewed.
• The Signal from Tölva, For Honor, Serial Cleaner, and more previewed.
• Our monitor group test.
• And much more!

This month, we sent Ross Geller apologist James Davenport into the prehistoric techno world of Ark: Survival Evolved. He returned not with dino fossils, but with loads of exclusive information on the game's new Tek Tier, and where the Early Access-dwelling survival sandbox is heading in future.

Speaking of the future, Samuel spent a few hours with The Creative Assembly's Halo Wars 2 the follow-up to 2009's RTS slant on the enduring sci-fi universe. Elsewhere inside, Tom Hatfield rounds up the best 20 mods to extend your favourite PC games; while Tom Senior explores the origins of Company of Heroes on the tenth anniversary of its release.

Previews this month include The Signal from T lva, For Honor, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, and many more. You can also treat yourself (or someone else) to an early Christmas present with a CoH 2 The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West Steam key free with the latest issue.

Issue 299 is on shelves now and available on all your digital devices from Google Play, the App Store and Zinio (they may be slow to update look for the laser-shooting dinos on the front). You can also order direct from My Favourite Magazines or purchase a subscription to save money, receive monthly deliveries and wonder at our exclusive subscriber covers. Here's a wee preview of this month's:

This month:

• James offers exclusive insights into Ark: Survival Evolved's new Tek Tier.
• Samuel spends a few hours in The Creative Assembly's Halo Wars 2.
• Tom Hatfield gathers the 20 best mods for some of the best-ever PC games.
• Tom Senior explores how classic RTS Company of Heroes was made.
• Battlefield 1, Shadow Warrior 2, FIFA 17, Civ 6, and more reviewed.
• The Signal from Tölva, For Honor, Serial Cleaner, and more previewed.
• Our monitor group test.
• And much more!

Soon, Ark: Survival Evolved will finally attempt to make good on those futuristic floating obelisks in the sky by introducing the Tek Tier, the first of many updates on its path to version 1.0 early next year. Watch the trailer above for a quick peek.

For a complete preview of what's coming next, be sure to check out the next issue of PC Gamer, but here s a basic breakdown. The Tek Tier is a new endgame technology tier in Ark s crafting system that rewards the survival sandbox s most stalwart players with some off-brand Power Rangers and Starship Troopers gear to mess with. Among the items to drop in the first update, which should land in the coming weeks, Ark will get the Tek armor, the Tek rifle, and the Giga Helmet that rad laser cannon tyrannosaur headpiece.

Every new piece of Tek tech has a powerful ability or two to make them desirable for more than their looks. The Tek helmet comes with a handy hud that can highlight creatures and other players, and color them based on whether they re hostile, neutral, or friendly. A night vision mode rounds it out, making viable at any hour. Tek gauntlets pack a powerful super punch that can send men flying, the chestpiece has a jetpack that does what jetpacks do, and those shiny metallic pants let you speed boost across entire maps in no time, even through destructible materials. But as a sucker for fashion, I think my favorite feature is the ability to choose the armor and LED highlight colors.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Tek Tier rollout, especially for longtime players of Ark, will be the underwater bases. Those are coming in another update early next year as part of the Tek Tier, but in the meantime, ogle this lovely original art and fill in the blanks with your imagination. I can see it now, an angry teen calling me something unrepeatable and capturing me from the back of their Mosasaurus outfitted with cybernetic armor. I ve always wanted to live in a cage, underwater. But really, it s a feature that was on the launch list for Ark, and it s good to know it s on the way.

As cool as it is, the new Tek tech can t be used with reckless abandon. Every ability and function requires Element, a rare resource you can only get by completing endgame challenges. And there are plenty more coming in the next six months or so.

To learn more about the Tek Tier, how underwater bases will work and when they re coming, and the complete roadmap for Ark s final stretch before leaving Early Access, be sure to pick up the next issue of PC Gamer. All and more are revealed in Surviving Early Access, our cover story featuring some interesting reveals from Ark devs Jeremy Stieglitz and Jesse Rapczak, and their plan for the dino survival sim s present and far flung future.

Take a peek at the cover below before it ships out to UK subscribers today and US subscribers on the 18th. If you re not subscribed to PC Gamer yet, give it a shot, or find the issue out in the wild on November 17 in the UK and December 6 in the US. Then tame it and give it a cool laser helmet.

Ark: Survival Evolved's feature-filled journey through Early Access has seen the open-world survival 'em up receive a fair few updates the latest of which marks number 248.

Besides three new creatures and a new Explorer Note system, the most recent patch brings with it "infinite" procedurally generated maps, where "players can determine a myriad of landscape options", including the heights of mountains, depths of valleys and specific choice of biome.

On the creatures front, patch 248 welcomes the water-based, high-speeding, solitary-hunting Kaprosuchus; the territorial, however otherwise peaceful, herbivore Chalicotherium; and the swamp-dwelling, oxygen-giving, amphibian Diplocaulus. Scattered across 130 chests throughout the island, the new Explorer Note System is a catalogue of diary-like stories from the archipelago's past inhabitants that also serve to buff XP upon discovery.

"These 3D Explorer and Story Notes are punctuated with powerful personalities from a Roman Centurion to an Ancient Chinese Warrior to an Egyptian Priestess, each one chronicling their experiences on ARK and unveiling kernels of the story secrets they have uncovered," reads a Steam Community post.

The update also adds a slew of less significant, although welcomed, adjustments for example, you're now able to directly wield your weapons when mount-riding smaller dinosaurs, which is handy all of which can be found here.

In separate Ark news, the somewhat controversial Scorched Earth DLC which developer Studio Wildcard has since addressed is currently on sale alongside the update, should that be something you're interested in checking out.

New to the world of dinosaur survival action? Read James' guide on how to get started in Ark: Survival Evolved.

For being over a year into Early Access, Ark still doesn t do much to welcome new players. It s a systems-heavy survival game that doesn t teach or surface its most essential, basic skills in an obvious way, so without a holding hand new players tend to go the way of the Dodo Bird. But Ark can be worth the inscrutability. I mean, you can ride a damn T-Rex. I ll punch every tree in the world if it means I get one of my own someday.

To get you on the same path, we ve assembled a guide to the early game of Ark so you can skip the frustration and head right into brontosaurus husbandry.

Choosing a server and spawn point 

I enjoy the mystery of each dino island, but not so much the thick mystique of server browsers and game settings, which can make it tough to get a handle on Ark's basics.

If you re brand new and just want to familiarize yourself with the systems: click Host / Local from the main menu for some safe solitude. Tweak some variables to make the process relaxing, if you like. Slide Dino Damage, Player Character Water Drain, and Player Character Food Drain down to zero, then slide XP Multiplier up to three. It ll prevent wandering raptors from turning you into an easy dinner and give you ample time to learn to make food before starving from a lack of it.

If you want to experience Ark for the first time on even footing with other players: click Join Ark from the main menu to get to the server browser. For first timers, I recommend limiting your selection to the original Ark map, The Island, and joining a PvE environment so strangers don t make your life miserable right off the bat. Official servers are a good place to start, so find one with a population and ping to taste and click Join.After loading the map, a character creation screen will appear. Create a monster, save it as a preset if you like, and turn your attention to the Spawn Region at the right side of the screen. Later maps designate which areas are the most difficult to start in, but the original island leaves it up to the player to discover. To save you from spawning on top of a Titanoboa six times in a row, select one of the safe-ish South Zones and click Create New Survivor.

Picking berries 

You ll spawn on or near a lovely tropical beach. Be sure to soak in the good vibes for a moment, then get to work. It s time to play the most mundane part of Ark. There should be a some bushes where the sand meets grass, and rocks strewn all over the beach. Hold E on bushes and tap it while looking at rocks to harvest them for resources. Bushes will dole out berries, which are helpful in staving off early game hunger, and fiber, which you ll need to make clothes later on. Stones are an important component in crafting tools, which we ll get to once you level up.

To work towards that level up, keep doing what you re doing, maybe punch a few trees to start collecting some thatch and wood too.

Early tools and leveling up 

Tools expedite the process of collecting resources, so first we ll make a stone pick, which requires one stone, one wood, and 10 thatch. Remember, stones are on the beach, thatch and wood in trees.

Once you have the required resources, open your menu (V) and click on Craftables. The stone pick recipe should be grey if you have the necessary resources. If so, double-click to craft it. The pick will appear under inventory items. Drag it down to your Quick Item Slots, which correspond the the number row on your keyboard. Close the menu, press the key tied to your pick and your character will equip it.

Use it on trees and stones to gather thatch and flint in abundance, and wood and stone in smaller amounts.

Eventually, you ll get a notification that you leveled up. Hit V to bring up the inventory and character menu, and turn your attention to the stats at the right portion of the screen. You ll get a single point to pour into one of 11 stats. Don t worry too much about what they all mean yet and throw that point into your health. Chances are that a mean creature will come around soon enough to test it out.

Next, you ll get 10 Engram Points to spend on learning crafting recipes. Pick the campfire, stone hatchet, and spear.Build order for these doesn t matter too much, but the stone hatchet is a handy one to get sooner than later. It operates as the inverse of the stone pick, gathering more stone and wood than flint and thatch. The sooner you have the hatchet and pick, the easier it ll be to pile up resources.

Campfires and cooking

By now, it s likely you re getting hungry. Ark isn t subtle with its warnings, flashing status updates in a big garish font across the top of the screen. If you don t want to wait around for Print Shop 97 Word Art omens, pay attention to the icons at the bottom right of the screen. Food is represented by the juicy cut with the bone sticking out. Food. Let it deplete and you ll starve, which means your health will slowly drain until you eat again.

It s likely you ve been collecting berries, so pop those like mad (with the exception of Narcoberries and Stimberries eat a few to figure out what narcos do, just make sure ). They ll stave off hunger, but won t regenerate health. To really stay on top of your tummy, you ll need some fat steaks. But first, you ll need to terrorize some unfortunate birds.There s probably an abundance of peaceful animals on the beach, including the very unlucky Dodo Bird. Bottom of the Ark foodchain, Dodo birds are slow enough to chase, abundant enough to rely on, and provide a decent amount of hides and meat for the early game. It s not your fault they're extinct they're meant to die. Equip a spear and poke them until they forever sleep. Stop jabbing as soon as they re dead and equip your stone pickaxe it harvests more meat than hides and the hatchet does the opposite. Chip away at the corpse until it dissolves.

If you ve yet to build a campfire, do so now, but be sure to place it somewhere safe and easy to locate. Look for a clear spot on the ground near a striking landmark before committing, but don t dawdle too much meat spoils after 10 minutes without refrigeration.To cook your meat, look at your fire and hold E, then select Access Inventory. From here, you ll need to place fuel thatch or wood are usually abundant and your raw meat in the campfire inventory, then click Light Fire. Give your meat a few seconds and it ll appear as Cooked Meat in the fire inventory. Drag it back over to your Quick Item Slots for easy access and slam some of those steaks. Each restores 20 points of food and 8 points of health, far more than berries.

Cooked Meat can still spoil after 20 minutes, so don t sit on it too long. Chow down. Be sure to keep Dodos and other small, low level animals in your diet. Meat goes fast and so does your hunger meter. Besides, you ll need the hides anyway.

Crafting clothes and a bed 

Clothes increase your armor level, which acts as an HP buffer, and increase protection from the cold and heat. They re a must in the early game, and luckily, they won t break the bank. A full set of cloth armor costs 145 fiber and 10 hides, and if you ve been harvesting bushes and slaughtering dodos, it s likely you can make them without much issue.

If you re low on hides and set on meat, harvest dodo corpses with the hatchet. Be sure to learn the recipes as you level up, craft each item, and then drag them from your inventory over to the corresponding slot under Your Equipped Items.

Looking good. Now let s get you a place to sleep.

Hide sleeping bags are the earliest respawn and fast-travel items you can craft in Ark. They re not exactly for, well, sleeping. When you die, you can choose to respawn wherever you placed a sleeping bag. You can also use them to fast travel between other sleeping bags or beds. Dream travel. Problem is, they disappear after a single respawn. It s better than dying, losing your entire inventory, and respawning at a random location within the same zone. Ark s maps are huge and finding old campsites isn t easy.Sleeping bags require 25 hides and 15 fiber, so they re no small investment, especially for a consumable item. Some recommend going straight for the bed, which functions like the bag, but can be used infinitely. It takes 15 wood, 80 thatch, 30 fiber, and 40 hide not cheap early on.

If you go for the bed, don t place it on the beach. Venture deeper into the island and build that bed a home.

Moving inland and making a home 

Now that you have decent clothes, a full belly, and all the basic tools at your disposal, it s time to start exploring the island. Moving inland means you ll face threatening dinos, but it also means you ll find more valuable resources. The beach life isn t for everyone anyway. To protect yourself from the elements and the velociraptors, you ll want to build a small hut.So before moving inland, level up enough to secure the thatch doorframe, thatch foundation, thatch door, thatch roof, and thatch wall crafting recipies. Most require plenty of thatch, wood, and fiber to construct, so gather enough to build a few of each. Once you re ready, make sure you re doing well on food, craft another spear or two, and head out.

Don t worry about going too far inland. (You ll know if you ve gone too far when a massive dinosaur swallows you whole.) Find a sheltered, cozy patch of land to build your home. Craft and equip the foundation, walls, door components, and roof, then lay them out as desired. Don t go too big. This probably won t be your permanent home, so a 4x4 will probably do. As long as you can fit a bed and storage box or two inside, you ll be fine.

You ll want to build a few storage boxes (25 wood, 20 thatch, 10 fiber) for hoarding resources. Gather as much as you can and dump it. It ll come in handy sooner or later.

The journey ahead 

If you ve made it this far, you re probably set to explore the rest of what Ark has to offer on your own. Going forward, be sure to interact with other players. Joining tribes has a ton of benefits, and playing with real people can make Ark a much better experience.

Most importantly, don't worry about playing in any specific way. If you're frustrated by the early game grind and dinosaurs keep getting you down, look up some cheats and make yourself a god. Check out the hundreds of mods available in the Steam Marketplace. Join a server with accelerated XP and resource gathering do what you want. Ark is a sandbox that you can explore and interact with in just about any way you like.

But if you're enjoying the vanilla Ark experience, keep gathering resources, learning new engram recipes, and exploring the island. Slowly branch out into new parts of the island, building small bases along the way. Don't rush into anything blindly, as curious as you might be. Take your time to learn dino behaviors and resource utilities, and you'll be fine.

Once you have your feet under you, experiment with allocating stats into different traits, hunt a dangerous dino, and if you re feeling especially adventurous, try to tame your own dino. Your inner five-year-old will be over the moon.

Studio Wildcard s Ark: Survival Evolved remains in Early Access, however last week released its first paid expansion. The majority of comments found here not to mention the fact that the game s Steam reviews have swung from Mostly Positive to Mostly Negative over the past few days would suggest a sizeable number of players have been upset by the move. Studio Wildcard has now officially responded.

As part of a new blog post that introduces a new creature as well as where the game is heading in future, the developer s community manager Jat speaks directly to the paid DLC and the rationale behind its release.

Put simply: we are absolutely committed to driving aggressive development towards a solid, feature-robust game launch for Ark: Survival Evolved. Everyone at Wildcard wakes up every day thinking about how we can make Ark into a better game today than it was the day before, says Jat. It s not always easy, but our intent is ever-forward progress towards a retail release that will be far more ambitious in scope and features than our original vision when we launched Ark into Steam Early Access in June 2015. Your feedback enables us to continually expand the game to become better than ever!

Jat goes on to suggest Studio Wildcard s vision always included the idea of expansion Arks, and that releasing them while the main game is still in Early Access/unfinished is the best route in doing so.

The post continues: We determined that it is more sound to iterate on these systems during Early Access than after retail launch, given the significant risks involved if we didn't get it right . While that meant unveiling the first Expansion early, it also means an easier time integrating further post-launch Expansions into the Ark network.

We understand that this isn't everyone's cup of tea, and we appreciate the enjoyment people seem to be getting out of this initial view of how Expansion Arks can work. Now that we have the systems in place to support them, we can ensure minimal integration issues with subsequent releases after Ark: Survival Evolved itself has launched.

The blog post can be read in full here. According to Blue s News, Ark s Scorched Earth expansion was the number one top-selling game on Steam last week.