Zebitty

ARK Survival Evolved is a game in Early Access on steam. It is currently still in Early Access – ie unfinished.

When you participate in an early access scheme, in effect, you’re becoming an investor in that product. You give money to the developer with the understanding that the money will be used to pay the wages for programmers, artists etc who are creating something the investors saw potential in.

For the developer to then take some of those funds and use them to develop other projects, which they subsequently release as paid content seems, at best, wrong, and at worst, fraud.

Since ARK Survival Evolved is still in early access, they can't possibly have any funds from 'retail release' to pay for the development of DLC, so it seems very likely that money people gave them for their early access game was used to develop this DLC.

The fan boys on the steam forums are already out in full force, defending the developer, but it really feels like a slap in the face to early access purchasers, knowing that the money given to the developer to create a game they were spruiking, was instead used to develop something else they now want us to pay (again) for.

It's a shame Steam lets this kind of crap happen, and they really need to put a stop to it before it gets out of hand. As of the last few days, there are hundreds of negative reviews. Guess the developers will pay the price for being greedy.

Other devs take note on 'how not to treat your customers', I guess.