Summary
- Fans are upset over the Ark: Aquatica DLC trailer, believing that is uses AI-generated footage.
- Snail Games is receiving backlash for the trailer.
- Concerns are growing over the direction of the Ark franchise and Snail Games' silence on the recent trailer controversy.
Fans believe the trailer for the upcoming Ark: Survival Evolved DLC, Aquatica, is AI-generated, leading to a wave of backlash. Snail Games has unlisted and deleted some of its posts regarding the new Ark: Survival Evolved DLC and seemingly attempted to move on. However, fans have even begun to comment about their frustrations on new posts for Snail Games' unrelated projects, like Bellwright, to ensure that their voices are heard.
On March 18, the Ark social media account announced that Ark: Survival Evolved's Aquatica DLC would be fully developed by Snail Games. This news came across to fans as a peculiar change since Studio Wildcard typically handles most of the mainline Ark games. Although this news was disappointing to many fans, it came with a tease of Ark: Lost Colony info along with reassurance that Ark: Survival Ascended will be handled by Wildcard along with Ark 2. Following these updates, the Ark: Aquatica DLC trailer dropped, and gamers were not happy with what they saw.
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The trailer for Ark: Aquatica has been slammed with backlash after fans noticed that it appeared to feature AI-generated footage. This outrage echoes the disappointment shown over AI in other games recently. The Aquatica DLC teases exciting new creatures and mechanics to explore, but the hype surrounding this release appears to have been dampened after seeing the creative vision on display. Ark: Aquatica's GDC 2025 reveal trailer begins with approximately seven seconds of gameplay footage as the player character spawns and looks around, gathering their bearings, before what looks like entirely AI-generated content covers the rest. Although many believe this video is AI, there has been no definitive confirmation from Snail Games yet.
Ark: Aquatica Trailer Spawns Backlash
The trailer describes an entirely new world waiting for players after 10 years of journeying in the world of Ark. This narration is shown alongside AI footage of a man in trunks without other gear, deep diving. The video pans across footage of reefs and underwater flora. A dinosaur is shown swimming past fish and deep-sea architecture, and the diver fires a crossbow and grabs a crystal in between other quick shots. In a particularly notable cut, an octopus pops up out of a body of water, seeming to float for a moment.
Fans are upset by this trailer for several reasons, but they seem especially agitated because they believe that Snail Games has used high-fidelity Generative AI visuals to begin marketing this DLC in place of any meaningful gameplay footage. Commenters noted that the proportion of these visuals compared to actual in-game footage is overwhelming. Others stated that the video is tone-deaf and out of touch, since so many gamers have begun to argue against AI, and some fans are begging Snail Games to sell the rights to the Ark franchise to other developers. Since this backlash has surfaced, Snail Games has unlisted the video, but its lack of commentary on the matter has left fans concerned.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 61 /100 Critics Rec: 13%
- Released
- August 29, 2017
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Blood, Crude Humor, Use of Alcohol, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Studio Wildcard
- Publisher(s)
- Studio Wildcard
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer
- Franchise
- ARK: Survival Evolved
WHERE TO PLAY
As a man or woman stranded naked, freezing and starving on the shores of a mysterious island called ARK, you must hunt, harvest resources, craft items, grow crops, research technologies, and build shelters to withstand the elements. Use your cunning and resources to kill or tame & breed the leviathan dinosaurs and other primeval creatures roaming the land, and team up with or prey on hundreds of other players to survive, dominate... And escape!
You must eat and drink to survive, with different kinds of plants & meat having different nutritional properties, including human meat. Ensuring a supply of fresh water to your home and inventory is a pressing concern. All physical actions come at a cost of food and water, long-distance travel is fraught with subsistence peril! Inventory weight makes you move slower, and the day/night cycle along with randomized weather patterns add another layer of challenge by altering the temperature of the environment, causing you to hunger or thirst more quickly. Build a fire or shelter, and craft a large variety of customizable clothing & armors, to help protect yourself against locational damage & extreme temperatures using the dynamic indoor/outdoor insulation calculation system!
