ARK: Survival Ascended Premium Mods on Consoles Q&A – ‘By 2030, Time Spent on UGC Will Be Way Bigger’

When Studio Wildcard released ARK: Survival Ascended, its Unreal Engine 5 remaster of the highly successful open world survival game ARK: Survival Evolved, the studio bet heavily on the power of modding and user-generated content.

Studio Wildcard partnered with Overwolf's CurseForge to deliver these mods not just on Steam but everywhere, from PC to consoles. In addition to the dedicated webpage, there's an in-game browser where users can check out the over 1900 mods available in ARK: Survival Ascended, which range from new weapons to new armor, creatures, and even fully-fledged game modes and high-quality maps.

Related Story Nexus Mods Has Crossed the 10 Billion Downloads Milestone

Studio Wildcard and Overwolf did not stop there, though. They allowed the development of Premium Mods, and now nine of these paid mods are also available on Xbox Series S|X, with PlayStation 5 following soon. I've spoken with Studio Wildcard's Lead Designer and Co-Creative Director Jeremy Stieglitz and Overwolf's Chief Marketing Officer Shahar Sorek to discuss the importance of this landmark release and the role that user-generated content will play in the future of the games industry.

First, let's talk about this partnership between Overwolf and Studio Wildcard for ARK: Survival Ascended mods. How did it come about?

Jeremy Stieglitz: When we looked at doing a new version of ARK, we knew by looking at the original game that modding was very important for that game's success. But we asked ourselves the question, how can we make modding more of a core pillar of the game that will benefit all players for all versions of the game, not just the PC version, not just the Steam version?

In ARK: Survival Evolved, it wasn't even just that mods were limited to PC. They were limited to Steam. We had versions of the game on Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store, and those versions wouldn't even work with the Steam mods.

We were looking at the limitations of Steam Workshop and really getting the