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Studio Wildcard - Version 17 vs Version 18
Aug 16, 2026, 04:21 PM
Updated licence terms with the April 2026 amendment lowering the monthly fee to $1.5 million and added first-half 2026 franchise revenue shares
Aug 27, 2026, 08:53 AM
Corrected Thomas Williamson's studio title and split his ARK 2 role into Development Director and Technical Director; added the sequel's executive producer and creative director; marked Jesse Rapczak as a co-founder
11Studio Wildcard is the American developer behind the ARK franchise and the developer and publisher of ARK 2. The studio is best known for ARK: Survival Evolved (2017) and the Unreal Engine 5 remaster ARK: Survival Ascended (2023). For a summary of the new game, see the Overview page.22Studio Profile44FieldDetailFoundedOctober 2014 (as Wildcard Properties LLC)FoundersDoug Kennedy (CEO), Jeremy Stieglitz (Co-Founder and Lead Designer/Programmer), Jesse Rapczak (Creative Director), Susan Browning StieglitzHQ OfficesRedmond, Washington and Gainesville, FloridaParentSDE Inc., a Snail Games USA affiliate of Snail Games (parent listed on Nasdaq)Co-Developer on ARK 2Grove Street Games (Development and Technical Director Thomas Williamson)Role on ARK 2Lead developer and publisher5+FieldDetailFoundedOctober 2014 (as Wildcard Properties LLC)FoundersDoug Kennedy (CEO), Jeremy Stieglitz (Co-Founder and Lead Designer/Programmer), Jesse Rapczak (Co-Founder and Creative Director), Susan Browning StieglitzHQ OfficesRedmond, Washington and Gainesville, FloridaParentSDE Inc., a Snail Games USA affiliate of Snail Games (parent listed on Nasdaq)Co-Developer on ARK 2Grove Street Games (founder and chief executive Thomas Williamson, credited as ARK 2 Development Director and Technical Director)Role on ARK 2Lead developer and publisher66Notable Games77TitleYearNotesARK: Survival Evolved2017Debut title. Early Access June 2015, full release August 2017. More than 35 million copies sold across all platforms (76.5 million total installs).ARK: Survival Evolved Expansions2017 to 2021Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, Genesis: Part 1 and Part 2. Genesis: Part 2 sets up the bridge into ARK 2.ARK: The Animated Series2024Animated companion series. Vin Diesel reprises Santiago and is executive producer.ARK: Survival Ascended2023UE5 remaster of the first game. Early Access October 25, 2023; crossed four million units by December 2025.ARK 22028 target. See Overview.Sequel on UE5 with Grove Street Games as co-developer. Locked third-person, soulslike primitive melee, smaller-tribe survival.99Studio History1010The company was founded in October 2014 as Wildcard Properties LLC by Doug Kennedy (CEO), Jeremy Stieglitz, Jesse Rapczak, and Susan Browning Stieglitz. Stieglitz had just exited a previous studio under a one-year non-compete clause. ARK: Survival Evolved entered Steam Early Access in June 2015 and reached full release in August 2017, going on to sell more than 35 million copies (76.5 million total installs across all platforms). On October 25, 2023, the studio launched ARK: Survival Ascended, a UE5 remaster that surpassed four million units sold by December 2025 and is its primary live-service runtime today.1212Ownership1414In December 2015, Wildcard Properties LLC was acquired by SDE Inc., a Snail Games USA affiliate, through a merger with a subsidiary called Snail Ark Inc. The corporate parent has been Snail Games ever since. Snail Games is publicly listed on the Nasdaq exchange and its 2025 Investor Day re-confirmed the 2028 target window for ARK 2.1616Vin Diesel's Role1818Vin Diesel's involvement runs deeper than a voice role. Since 2020 he has held the title of President of Creative Convergence at Studio Wildcard, a senior creative-leadership position across games, animation, and licensing. He is credited as executive producer on ARK 2 and on the connected animated series, and voices Santiago da Costa.2020ARK 2 Co-Development2222ARK 2 is not built solely in-house. The credited co-development partner is Grove Street Games, brought in to share the engineering and production workload alongside the live-service obligations on Survival Ascended. Their director Thomas Williamson is Development and Technical Director on ARK 2. The partnership is why the team can keep shipping content for the UE5 remaster while the sequel is in active production.23+ARK 2 is not built solely in-house. The credited co-development partner is Grove Street Games, brought in to share the engineering and production workload alongside the live-service obligations on Survival Ascended. Its founder and chief executive Thomas Williamson holds the dual role of Development Director and Technical Director on ARK 2. The partnership is why the team can keep shipping content for the UE5 remaster while the sequel is in active production. The sequel's own leadership inside Studio Wildcard is named separately: co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz is credited as executive producer on ARK 2, and co-founder Jesse Rapczak as its creative director, with both also attached to the connected animated series.2424Risk-Conscious Roadmap2626Studio leadership has been openly cautious about launching a sequel this size as a single release. To reduce that risk, the team moved several of ARK 2's signature mechanics into a Q4 2027 paid expansion for the UE5 remaster called Legacy of Santiago. That expansion is not ARK 2 itself; it is a public test bed for soulslike combat, advanced traversal, smaller-tribe pacing, and the primitive-only weapon ramp.2828Jeremy Stieglitz has framed the strategy bluntly: every game can have an expansion pack that is a miss and the team can move on, but if a whole new game misses, it can be company-ending. Pulling the new mechanics into a tested expansion is the studio's response to that exposure.3030Publisher Licensing Terms3232The ARK intellectual property is licensed rather than owned outright by the Nasdaq-listed publisher. SDE Inc. is Studio Wildcard's parent company and holds the underlying rights; the publisher signed an exclusive software licence for the first game in November 2015, amended and restated it in January 2022, and amended it again in December 2022, March 2023, October 2023 and April 2026. The agreement runs to 2035 and renews automatically in three-year terms unless either side opts out.3434The release of ARK 2 is written directly into those commercial terms. The publisher paid a $2.0 million monthly licence fee from the remaster's launch until March 2026, and an April 2026 amendment lowered that fee to $1.5 million per month; either way the fee terminates when the sequel is publicly released. At that moment the royalty on the first game also steps up to 40% of its total revenue, replacing the fee-plus-royalty arrangement that applies before launch. That makes the sequel's launch a balance-sheet event as much as a creative one, which helps explain the studio's unhurried public posture on dates. The ARK franchise accounted for 89.4% of the publisher's net revenue in the year ended December 31, 2025, and the five best-selling franchises together accounted for 96.6%. In the first half of 2026 the franchise still carried 84.6% of net revenue, and the top five together carried 97.1%.3636Unconfirmed Details3838Several aspects of the studio's current operation have not been published: total Studio Wildcard headcount, the number of Grove Street Games staff on ARK 2, the split of responsibilities between the two studios, internal team structure beyond named leadership, and any future projects beyond ARK 2 and the Survival Ascended live-service plan. This page will be updated as the studio publishes additional details.
