Great with friends
Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews
“And most importantly play with friends. It’s a thousand times better that way.”
Steam review · 849.9 h played ↗
ARK: Survival Evolved
Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.
Very Positive · 84%Very Positive · 84%Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Efecto Studios, Virtual Basement LLC2017Open World Survival Craft · Survival · Adventure
The verdict
A huge, brutal dino-taming survival sandbox, best with friends or mods. Since Aquatica it suffers menu freezes, a 300-500GB install and dead official servers. Skip it if you want stability.
Great for
Players who enjoy taming dinos, grinding and modded or private-server co-op with friends
Main risk
Main-menu freezes, crashes and a 300-500GB install make it hard or impossible to run.
What players love
Dino taming and breeding is addictive
Mentioned in ~1 in 10 positive reviews
“Ark's variety of creatures and their complete uniqueness from one another really draws me in.”
Steam review · 70 h played ↗
Mods and community content
Mentioned in ~1 in 14 positive reviews
“mod support is huge”
Steam review · 220.2 h played ↗
Brutal, unforgiving survival is fun
Mentioned in ~1 in 14 positive reviews
“Ark wasnt one of those as you could die the same way on day 1 and day 300.”
Steam review · 281.2 h played ↗
Huge amount of content and maps
Mentioned in ~1 in 14 positive reviews
“The game is filled with content and i mean FILLED. A giant map, hundreds of dinos, a dozen DLCs, singleplayer or multiplayer and a lot more.”
Steam review · 281.2 h played ↗
Preferred over ASA, runs on older PCs
Mentioned in ~1 in 19 positive reviews
“Overrall, love ASE over ASA. Much better game.”
Steam review · 1954.3 h played ↗
What players complain about
Freezes and crashes at menu or launch
Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews
“i just get to the main menu and it freezes”
Steam review · 0.1 h played ↗
Greedy devs and dead official servers
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews
“SERVERS ARE OFFLINE FOREVER, CANT PLAY ANY OF THE OFFICAL SERVERS AS OF 2026”
Steam review · 82 h played ↗
Multiplayer connection and hosting problems
Mentioned in ~1 in 6 negative reviews
“friend can never join my non dedi server the first try. we just have to keep trying and trying until it just randomly decides to let him connect”
Steam review · 220.6 h played ↗
Aquatica update broke the game; devs pushed ASA
Mentioned in ~1 in 6 negative reviews
“this company broke the game when they launched the Aquatica DLC and made that version the main download.”
Steam review · 0.5 h played ↗
Bugs and lost saves, dinos stuck in the ground
Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews
“everytime I log back into my SinglePlayer World, all my progress is gone.”
Steam review · 87.9 h played ↗
Enormous install size (300-500GB)
Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews
“370 GB. That's not a typo.”
Steam review · 204.3 h played ↗
System requirements
From the Steam store page
Steam Deck: VerifiedController support60 GB
Minimum
OSWindows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions)
ProcessorIntel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better
Memory8 GB RAM
GraphicsNVIDIA GTX 670 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or better
Storage60 GB available space
OSWindows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions)
ProcessorIntel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better
Memory8 GB RAM
GraphicsNVIDIA GTX 670 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or better
Storage60 GB available space
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