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Let’s Talk About Beacon and Ark: Survival Ascended
Published April 1st, 2023 at 5:24 AM UTC

I'll get right to the point: I don't know anything more about Ark: Survival Ascended (ASA) than you do, so I don't know what Beacon's support for it will look like. There are two possibilities:

1. ASA uses the identical paths, stats, configs, etc. as as Ark: Survival Evolved (ASE) and Beacon can immediately support ASA without major changes. A minor build update would be necessary to detect the correct servers from Nitrado, but Beacon would be mostly unchanged. I think this is the less likely of the two possibilities.
2. ASA is different in some ways that requires me treating it like the separate game that it is. We already know some of this to be true, such as it not launching with support for all maps.

If I need to treat ASA as a separate game, there's some good news and bad news. The good news is I already planned for this eventuality, albeit for Ark 2. Beacon 1.6 already understands the concept of multiple games, but the interface elements are just hidden. This means I could get a version of Beacon ready for ASA in weeks (probably with bugs) instead of months.

Besides the timing, the bad news is that at this time, I have not decided wether or not ASA support for Beacon will be a paid upgrade. If I can go with option 1 and not have to treat it as a separate game, it'll be included in your existing Omni purchase. This would be my preferred route. However, my plan has been to charge separate Omni purchases for each game that Beacon supports. This makes sense because if I add support for a game you're not playing, it means you're not paying for something you don't need. This design is also already in place in the shipping version of Beacon. But I'm not convinced wether or not it's "right" to charge an upgrade fee for this, especially with all the repurchasing Wildcard expects us to do.

I have not decided yet. Beacon for Ark: Survival Ascended may be a paid upgrade, or it may not be. I need time to consider.

I think we have a rough transition ahead of us. I'll handle it the best I can.

Oh and for the record, this is not an April Fool's joke.