Ark Survival Evolved jumps to $60 on Steam

After more than two years, Ark: Survival Evolved is finally leaving early access next month...but Studio Wildcard has already raised the price.

Ark: Survival Evolved is slated to release as a bona-fide finished game on August 8, 2017, and like most new games, Ark will be priced at a $59.99 premium. Although Ark's full release is more than 30 days away, Studio Wildcard has just now doubled the game's price from $29.99 to $59.99 on Steam to "ensure retail parity for the upcoming launch." Ark's price had jumped to $60 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 while back.

Ark has been in early access since 2015, and despite its popularity, the developers have sparked ire over business decisions including charging $20 for a new DLC pack while the game was still in early access.

Ark: Survival Evolved currently has over 5 million owners on Steam, with 4.8 million total players on PC. The game's playerbase is still quite active: according to SteamDB, more than 600,000 users played Ark in the last two weeks.

As of August 2016, Ark sold more than 1.5 million copies on Xbox One, and sold over 1 million copies on PS4 as of February 2017. In less than a week, Ark earned $10 million in sales on Steam.