Over 150 contestants will do battle for a $20,000 prize check today in the wildly popular, open-world Early Access title, ARK: Survival Evolved on Twitch.
The channel “SurviveTheArk“ will showcase tournament gameplay and be commentated on by Fairlight_Excalibur, a streamer who is well known for his ARK gameplay. The ‘Unnatural Selection’ tournament has teams of four-player tribes battle against each other with a total of 163 players (as some tribes are composed of three or less members).
Preliminary events took place from August 29-31 and determined which players would advance to the Finale match today, which is broadcasting live from the Studio Wildcard offices in Seattle, Washington. Studio Wildcard, the development team behind ARK, will not only be rewarding the $20,000 check to the first place team, but will also reward the second place team with $10,000, the third place team with $4,000 and each championship qualifier with a $100 Steam gift card.
Studio Wildcard has also added in a few changes to the game to spice up tournament proceedings. A new beast known as “The Dragon” will spawn in mid-match in the central platform of the stage. The creature stands 90 feet tall and is considered the biggest beast to be introduced to the title yet. Viewers will also be given a special role as they can vote to change the properties of the game with “evolution events” as the battle rages on.
For example, “The Beast Within” makes all creatures attack players, even herbivores that would naturally stray away from hunter interaction. “Predator’s Night” gains the attention of carnivores from greater distances, so travelling becomes a risky endeavor. 14 evolution events will be available to vote on and viewers will also have the chance to win free ARK steam codes as stream giveaways.
Tournament updates will be made over at Gamepedia to show which participants remain, while specific tournament rules will also be overviewed.
A full release of the game will drop in June 2016, which will see the title made available on not only Windows, Linux, and OS X, but also PS4 and Xbox One.
