Much like H1Z1, the folks behind Ark: Survival Evolved have decided to spin their Survival of the Fittest game mode in to a completely separate entity while still retaining all of the bloodlust and fire breathing.

Unlike H1Z1, however, Ark: Survival of the Fittest will be completely free-to-play, without even a single microtransaction, cosmetic or not, to mess up what's supposed to be a highly competitive title. Here's the short trailer and a bit of information on what to expect from Survival of the Fittest:

Ark: Survival of the Fittest is a battle royale styled multiplayer game where you can reenact The Hunger Games with dinosaurs and dragons in either free for all, 2 player, 4 player or even 6 player tribes. As an extra incentive to be as ruthless and entertaining as possible, the top 10 players in each league will receive a portion of the $50,000 prize pool, which for an early access tournament is a rather hefty sum.

If you've played Ark: Survival Evolved for any long period of time you would have most likely noticed that it has some performance issues that can make even the most powerful of rigs break down in tears. Thankfully, it seems that the developers were aware of this issue as the Survival of the Fittest announcement states the standalone will be arriving with "massively boosted performance".

I'm pretty sure a dragon isn't a dinosaur, but I'm also pretty sure nobody cares because its a dragon!

As I mentioned before, Ark: Survival of the Fittest will be completely free and devoid of microtransactions, but it will still come with all of the benefits of a fully paid game which includes frequent updates, performance improvements and a whole bunch of new features and dinosaurs to play with in the future.

I'm not sure how exactly the developers plan to recoup their money from this venture, but perhaps Ark: Survival Evolved is doing so well they don't have to, and as such are completely free to indulge in a project purely out of passion. Whatever the reason, this is great news for both Ark fans and those that find the idea of riding around a dragon appealing.

Speaking of which, Ark: Survival Evolved is currently 40% off and will set you back €16,79, so if you're up for one of the best survival/crafting games out there, now would be the time to give it a try.