Ark: Survival Evolved is famous for its ferocious bestiary. This is a game that literally has dinosaurs with frickin' lasers attached to their heads, after all. The latest creature to be added to the game is quite a bit different from all of that, however, because instead of being huge and fierce (or even just kind of big, but still fierce), this new creature is a straight-up cuddler. It's an otter. 

Technically it's the "Lutra peloso," which as near as I can figure means "hairy otter" or something to that effect, but the point is that this isn't some giant, faux-prehistoric take on the beast that you can ride or feed your enemies to. It's just an otter, as we know and love them. You can even let it ride up on your shoulder.

"Found along the Island’s many inland waterways, Lutra Peloso have become exceptionally adept at hunting and foraging. This species of Otter has to be particularly cunning because of its diminutive size, and fierce competition for its preferred food source: fish. It is not a creature that excels at combat, and would not naturally pose an intimidating threat to any predators," the Dino Dossier explains. 

"There are few creatures which provide the companionship that Lutra Peloso does. Rather than traveling beside you, it would prefer to comfortably rest on your back, providing insulation." 

They may not the most effective fighters ever, but as Marc Singer discovered when he fell into quicksand that one time, they can come in handy now and then. (Yes, those were ferrets, but the principle is the same.) Aside from providing warmth in crappy weather, tamed otters can be sent to forage for fish or silica pearls, and can even have a slight chance of digging up black pearls. And they're so cute! Which is really what it's all about, right?

The latest Ark Digest also includes a promise from Studio Wildcard to continue the development of Ark: Survival Evolved once it goes into full release on August 29. "There has been a lot of questions regarding what will happen to the development of ARK. Whether there will be additional content added to the base game, in the vein of; new friends to tame, new engrams to learn, items to craft, QOL, gameplay, and optimization improvements... the answer to all that is yes!" the studio wrote. "We will be continuing to work on the base game, as well as plans for future content in the form of free updates, and DLC (paid and free)." 

Otters. 

Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard has some bad news, but also some good. Let's get the bad out of the way first: The process of prepping the game for retail release took longer than expected, and so the planned launch date of August 8, which the studio announced back in June, has been pushed to August 29.   

"We're deeply apologetic for those who were negatively affected by the delay; it sucks, it wasn't what we had wanted, nor planned but where we currently stand," the studio explained in a weekend update. "We wanted to address this sooner but did not want to make any statements until we were completely sure of what was going to happen." 

The delay also impacts the release of a planned update for the Ragnarok expansion map, which Studio Wildcard said is actually the upside to the whole thing. "This extended time will allow further development of the map and you guys can expect a gigantic update, even bigger than we initially thought," it explained. "On the date of release, the overground of the world will increase by approximately one quarter, which is near-enough a 'TheIsland-sized' expansion; the update will feature new biomes, a coastal Wyvern canyon, an epic boss encounter, new engrams, and something secret the Ragnarok team are cooking up!" 

Beyond that, the studio's focus will be on improving the performance of the game on PC and addressing specific issues like multiplayer bosses ("They're ridiculous, we know why and we're going to fix it"), the "Baby-to-Juvie Stasis issue" that prevents infant creatures from maturing properly, and stopping "jerks" from going under the map and raiding people. A major version update that will "significantly assist with DDoS mitigation, resolve the exploit which has allowed players to dupe, and ... allow players to rent PC-dedicated Console Servers" is also slated for the middle of August. 

In February, Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard unveiled a sponsored programme that would pay mod creators on a monthly basis for their work. Offering a stipend of $4,000 per month, each individual's work would be evaluated, and it would thereafter be determined if those modders would continue to be paid for the next month. 

With the dino hunter's August 8 PC release looming, however, not much has been said about the programme since—its Ragnarok map has been received well, however we don't know much about what happens next. To this end, I spoke to the developer's Jesse Stieglitz about how he and his team plan to grow the initiative post-launch. 

"We've not dedicated all that much time to promoting it, maybe not as much as we'd have liked to, however that's probably because we've been focused on shaping things up for our retail launch," says Stieglitz. "But we recently put out our next official mod called Ragnarok with a mod team that's now officially supported and we'll continue to have servers up for it and we'll have updates and more polished applied. 

"They basically get not only money from us but they get development support from us and that's probably more valuable to them because we help them shape it up technically and artistically and creatively."

Stieglitz suggests the sponsored community maps will only get bigger and better from hereon, and that the Ragnarok team are among the best level designers he's seen. Development on Ragnarok will continue till completion, and Wildcard plans to launch "at least" one more official DLC this year, with Stieglitz hopefully of a second. 

He continues: "Essentially the official mods, or paid mods pipeline is a way for us to get more free art content to players. We can only do so much ourselves so we look at best of what the mod community has to offer and how can we help them make their content better than it already is—whether it's financial support, but also a lot of the things it's logistics or technical support. There will be others and we use this as a kind of seeding programme to find the next ones. We'll hopefully have more to announce there going forward."

Ark: Survival Evolved is due to launch in full August 8, 2017. 

"Ark: Survival of the Fittest was for us an experiment," says Studio Wildcard's co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz. "It started as a mod and it was pretty cool and pretty fun. I lot of these games that are very successful—like PUBG, like, you know, Counter-Strike or DotA—originate as mods and can switch over to standalone titles."

Having begun life as a mod, Ark: Survival of the Fittest became a free-to-play standalone game in early 2016. As a promising battle royale-type venture—in a world prior to the likes of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds—it failed to take off and was later "reintegrated" into the main Survival Evolved game.  

According to Steam Spy's data, less than 300 people played Ark: Survival of the Fittest concurrently yesterday—whereas over 350,000 took to the wargrounds of PUBG simultaneously. Given the unexpected, astronomical success of Brendan Greene's similarly styled battle royale game, I asked Stieglitz where he thinks SotF went wrong, and whether or not Studio Wildcard will revisit it down the line.   

"We thought Survival of the Fittest would have that potential based on the fact that it was a pretty fun mod and there were a decent number of players. It never quite caught on as a standalone, even as a free-to-play which of course means it should larger numbers of players," Stieglitz explains. "We didn't want to charge something like that anyway—it's not our intent to charge for that kind of game and also, frankly, our primary priority was and is developing Ark: Survival Evolved. 

"It was an experiment that didn't catch on but we do think there's a fun game there. We've debated many times why it didn't quite hit the sweet spot when similar games—you might call them arena survival games, of some sort—have really taken off. Especially recently with PlayerUnknown's game and also [H1Z1] King of the Kill."

Stieglitz says he's unsure of where Survival of the Fittest fits into today's landscape, but that a lack of resources have prevented he and his team from reinvigorating the game as it stands. Stieglitz suggests the fact SotF's slow-paced, complex and hour-long battles mean its hard for players to drop in and out in the same way they can in PUBG—but the fact Ark includes dinosaurs is nevertheless appealing to the battle royale genre. 

He continues: "I don't know it'd be as big as PlayerUnknown's title, but I think dinosaurs are very agreeable to a general audience and they're cool in a PvP environment. Everybody understands how powerful a T-Rex is compared to, say, a rapture. That's a very intuitive thing—it's a good spectator game in fact. However, it really comes down to focus right now. We're a very small team relative to what we try to do - we've got about 30-some people in our core team—and it's difficult for us to develop Ark: Survival Evolved and Survival of the Fittest at the same time. 

"Honestly, I guess we'll have to see. Once Ark: Survival Evolved's core game is out the door in August, even then we're going to want to see what we can do with the mechanics. We plan many core gameplay updates for the foreseeable future. If somewhere in there we can find a group of people, however, who would want to take SotF forward, we probably would be interested in working something out."

Stieglitz notes that the team originally working on Survival of the Fittest were better versed in the technical side of the game as opposed to design. He admits Studio Wildcards has "toyed" with the idea of revisiting it, but that it's most likely to be kickstarted if they find the right developer externally, or if that developer finds them.  

"If we were to revisit it, we have to do so and ask: do we rebuilt it entirely or do we find a team that can take it forward," Stieglitz adds. "That's what it really comes down to: it's not that I don't think there's a good idea there, I do, but someone's got to actually make it. And we're a little too small to make it at the same time as Ark: Survival Evolved. 

"I certainly like Survival of the Fittest and I would hate to see nothing else come of it. My ability to predict the future is obviously pretty bad. Anything could happen I guess I could say."