Snail Games USA is set to make millions off of their Ark franchise of games by including them on juggernaut services Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus.
A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Snail Games USA has been excavated by Twitter sleuth @ethangach today, and the documents have revealed some future plans for the prehistoric survival game series Ark and the huge amount of money the company stands to gain by keeping the titles on subscription services for the future. The bar graph provided in the documents below could be a key reason as to why Snail keeps Ark as a ‘free’ inclusion on subscription services.
As denoted above, one of their strongest peaks of sales was during a week when the Epic Games store had a ‘free to play’ period, but sales remained strong. Previous successes such as this also broaden the audience Ark reaches. Notably, the document also reveals the sequel will remain on Xbox Game Pass for three years after release with “to put ARK 2 on game pass for three years upon release” while also entering an agreement to put Ark: Survival Evolved on PS Plus for millions as well. This is especially noteworthy considering not much is known about Ark 2 yet, except a very brief trailer featuring Vin Deisel.
There is a catch here, though, the monetary values don’t necessarily weigh the same. The document pulls the curtains back on the $2.5 million figure Snail Games received to keep Survival Evolved on Xbox Game Pass for the first six months of 2022, while they received $2.3 million for the inclusion of the sequel for three years. The document goes on to reveal that Sony paid $3.5 million to have Survival Evolved on PS Plus for March 1 to April 4, a whole million dollar sum more than Snail received for the ‘six-month lease’ outlined by the Xbox Game Pass deal.
Although it’s easy just to compare numbers, there is a swath of legal jargon to wade through on the reasonings behind these deals, including the constant re-stating of how Snail has a heavy reliance on the Xbox and PlayStation platforms (along with Google Play, etc.) to distribute their games, likely has a lot to do with the price differential. Fans can dissect the documents here.
