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Studio Wildcard
April 26, 2026 at 11:59 AM
Expanded studio profile with founder table, notable games, ownership history, Vin Diesel's senior role, Grove Street Games co-development, the risk-conscious Legacy of Santiago test bed strategy, and unconfirmed details (2026-04-26)
Studio 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), and is now leading work on the sequel covered across this wiki. For a high-level summary of the new game, see the Overview page.
Field | Detail |
|---|---|
Founded | October 2014 (as Wildcard Properties LLC) |
Founders | Doug Kennedy (CEO), Jeremy Stieglitz (Co-Founder and Lead Designer/Programmer), Jesse Rapczak (Creative Director), Susan Browning Stieglitz |
HQ Offices | Redmond, Washington and Gainesville, Florida |
Parent | SDE Inc., a Snail Games USA affiliate of Snail Games (parent listed on Nasdaq) |
Co-Developer on ARK 2 | Grove Street Games (Development and Technical Director Thomas Williamson) |
Role on ARK 2 | Lead developer and publisher |
Title | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
ARK: Survival Evolved | 2017 | Debut title. Steam Early Access June 2015, full release August 2017. Cumulative sales above 76 million copies across all platforms. |
ARK: Survival Evolved Expansions | 2017 to 2021 | Paid expansion run including Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, and Genesis: Part 1 and Part 2. Genesis: Part 2 sets up the bridge into ARK 2. |
ARK: The Animated Series | Premiered 2024 | Animated companion series that expands the saga's lore. Vin Diesel reprises Santiago and serves as executive producer. |
ARK: Survival Ascended | 2023 | Unreal Engine 5 remaster of the first game. Launched October 25, 2023 in Early Access and crossed four million units sold by December 2025. |
ARK 2 | 2028 target. See Overview. | Sequel built on Unreal Engine 5 with Grove Street Games as co-developer. Locked third-person camera, soulslike primitive melee, smaller-tribe survival. |
The company was founded in October 2014 under the name Wildcard Properties LLC by Doug Kennedy as CEO, Jeremy Stieglitz as co-founder and lead designer and programmer, Jesse Rapczak as creative director, and Susan Browning Stieglitz. Stieglitz had recently exited a previous studio under a one-year non-compete clause, which influenced the early hiring pattern. The team operates from two offices, one in Redmond, Washington and one in Gainesville, Florida.
ARK: Survival Evolved entered Steam Early Access in June 2015 and reached full release in August 2017. It became the studio's flagship product and over its lifetime has sold more than 76 million copies cumulatively across all platforms. On October 25, 2023, the studio launched ARK: Survival Ascended, an Unreal Engine 5 remaster that surpassed four million units sold by December 2025 and is the studio's primary live-service runtime today.
In 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 transaction made the studio a wholly owned member of the larger group, and the corporate parent has been Snail Games ever since. Snail Games is publicly listed on the Nasdaq exchange and reports ARK franchise figures as part of its consolidated results, which is why cumulative sales for both Survival Evolved and Survival Ascended are publicly disclosed. The 2025 Investor Day re-confirmed the 2028 target window for ARK 2 to investors.
Vin Diesel's involvement runs deeper than a marquee voice role. Since 2020 he has held the title of President of Creative Convergence at Studio Wildcard, a senior creative-leadership position covering franchise direction across games, animation, and licensing. He is credited as executive producer on ARK 2 and on the connected animated series, and he voices and performs as Santiago da Costa, the player character of ARK 2.
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. Their director, Thomas Williamson, serves as the Development and Technical Director on ARK 2. The partnership is the structural reason the team can keep shipping content for the Unreal Engine 5 remaster while a sequel of this scope is in active production.
The studio's leadership has been openly cautious about the risk of launching a sequel of this size as a single self-contained release. To reduce that risk, the team has 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, but it acts as a public test bed: soulslike combat, advanced traversal, smaller-tribe pacing, and the primitive-only weapon ramp will ship to a live audience inside the older runtime so the team can iterate on tuning and feedback before the sequel arrives.
Jeremy Stieglitz has framed the strategy bluntly. As he put it, 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 ahead of time is the studio's response to that exposure, and is part of why the 2028 ARK 2 window is being held rather than pulled forward.
Several aspects of the studio's current operation have not been published. The total Studio Wildcard headcount across the Redmond and Gainesville offices is not publicly disclosed. The exact number of Grove Street Games staff assigned to ARK 2, and the split of responsibilities between the two studios, has not been broken out. No internal team structure beyond the named leadership roles has been announced, and no future projects beyond ARK 2 and the existing Survival Ascended live-service plan have been confirmed. This page will be updated as the studio publishes additional staffing, partner, or roadmap details.
