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Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99Subscribe now Essential Hardware Abiotic Factor Dune: Awakening PC Gaming Show Recommended reading After a decade of development, Roboquest's developer is calling time on its roguelite shooter: 'There's no way we can continue to provide content for players with over 1,000 hours of gameplay' RuneScape player pulls off a personal Shawshank Redemption: Grinds his way out of one-zone house arrest by grinding a raid 2,000 times over 10,000 hours: 'It was all worth it' After saying negative reviews 'might just cause our death' and 'we've got a few months left in the oven', No Rest for the Wicked CEO claims he never said they were in 'immediate financial danger', actually Monster Hunter Wilds has been hit by over 2,000 negative Steam reviews in the last week as players lose hope that Capcom will fix its egregious performance issues Survival & Crafting Ark: Survival Ascended celebrates 10 years of dino-dodging with a visual upgrade and letting you run around in your birthday suit Survival & Crafting One Dune: Awakening player 'will not bend the knee' to hackers laying waste to ornithopters—'I am personally on their hit list now' After raising over $800 million from its community, Star Citizen's developer delays the release of a new ship upgrade as players baulk at having to pay for it Survival & Crafting Ark: Survival Evolved Guy with 35,000 hours in Ark: Survival Evolved gives it a negative Steam review: 'How do I get a refund!!' Christopher Livingston 22 July 2025 "You had something great. Hope you don't choke on your GREED!!!" When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Studio Wildcard) Ark: Survival Evolved left early access on August 27, 2017. That's nearly 70,000 hours ago… which means if a player has logged 35,202 hours in Ark, they've essentially been playing the dino-survival game for half its lifespan. Not only has one player actually done that, they just gave Ark a negative review on Steam. After 35,202 hours. And amazingly, even bravely, perhaps—they're also demanding a refund. "I have enjoyed Ark for 35,000 hours, one of my favorite games to play with friends and family," the reviewer said on Steam. "I ran a ASM [Ark Server Manager] server w/mods for years until today. NOTHING works anymore." Related Articles After a decade of development, Roboquest's developer is calling time on its roguelite shooter: 'There's no way we can continue to provide content for players with over 1,000 hours of gameplay' RuneScape player pulls off a personal Shawshank Redemption: Grinds his way out of one-zone house arrest by grinding a raid 2,000 times over 10,000 hours: 'It was all worth it' After saying negative reviews 'might just cause our death' and 'we've got a few months left in the oven', No Rest for the Wicked CEO claims he never said they were in 'immediate financial danger', actually The issue appears to be the release of Ark Aquatica, a 10-year anniversary DLC for Ark: Survival Evolved. It's currently rated on Steam as "Overwhelmingly Negative" with only 12% of its reviews positive ones. Not only are users reporting bugs and poor performance for the DLC, but also that it breaks mods, server settings, and configuration files across the entire game. "Server doesn't match, mods don't work, and of all this is to force us to ASA [Ark: Survival Ascended, the remastered version of Ark]," the 35,000-hour player continues in their review. "I have that game as well, and it sucks. That is why we went back to ASE [Ark: Survival Evolved] and now you have managed to screw that also. "You had something great. Hope you don't choke on your GREED!!! How do I get a refund!!" they conclude. (Image credit: Steam) 35,202 hours, by the way, is four years. I don't mean they've been playing Ark for four years, I mean those 35,202 hours add up to an entire, solid four years of time. Even if that includes the uptime of running a server, that is a big Ark fan you've pissed off. Maybe the biggest? The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. For the record, it appears publisher Snail Games is aware of the issues. "Our top priority remains to fix an issue with the game engine on the live version of ARK: Survival Evolved," reads a post on Ark's Steam page today, adding that the problem is "proving to be complex" and that "a solution continues to be developed in order to address mods from instantly crashing and we look forward to posting an update when possible." This isn't the first time we've seen a negative review from a player with hundreds or thousands of hours in a game—Joshua recently tracked down someone who had played Battlezone 98 for 8,000 hours only to leave a negative review. (Plus, Joshua wound up agreeing with him). But this has to be the biggest one yet, right? 35,000 hours in a single game? I don't think I've ever seen that level of commitment, especially alongside that level of disappointment. You know what? I hope they do get a refund. It's worth noting that even after writing their scathing indictment of Ark and demanding their money back, the reviewer has played, um, an additional 32 hours in the past week. Does that mean one of the recent patches has improved the situation? I've reached out to them for further comment, and will update this story if I hear back. Christopher Livingston Social Links Navigation Senior Editor Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. After a decade of development, Roboquest's developer is calling time on its roguelite shooter: 'There's no way we can continue to provide content for players with over 1,000 hours of gameplay' RuneScape player pulls off a personal Shawshank Redemption: Grinds his way out of one-zone house arrest by grinding a raid 2,000 times over 10,000 hours: 'It was all worth it' After saying negative reviews 'might just cause our death' and 'we've got a few months left in the oven', No Rest for the Wicked CEO claims he never said they were in 'immediate financial danger', actually Monster Hunter Wilds has been hit by over 2,000 negative Steam reviews in the last week as players lose hope that Capcom will fix its egregious performance issues Ark: Survival Ascended celebrates 10 years of dino-dodging with a visual upgrade and letting you run around in your birthday suit One Dune: Awakening player 'will not bend the knee' to hackers laying waste to ornithopters—'I am personally on their hit list now' Latest in Survival & Crafting Abiotic Factor review All Abiotic Factor soup recipes and their buffs Abiotic Factor 1.0 release date—When to expect Cold Fusion's new story, upgrades, and traders in your timezone One Dune: Awakening player 'will not bend the knee' to hackers laying waste to ornithopters—'I am personally on their hit list now' Grow a Garden has rolled out another update, but this time we are abandoning dinosaurs for something a little more laid-back DayZ creator's monster-hunting survival game gets major new DLC offering brutal endgame challenges with lavish loot: 'Survival games should be challenging, after all' Latest in News 6 years of hushed development later, Riot's League of Legends fighting game has finally resurfaced and it's going to be playable very soon Stop Killing Games is facing a complaint in the EU that uses nonsense logic to accuse the movement's founder of failing to disclose financial contributions he never made: 'It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you' Twitch's most popular vtuber leads a mass exodus from her agency, claiming it withheld over $500K in charity funds: 'This entire situation has broken me' Dwarf Fortress just made it easier for modders to add their own procedural creatures, items, curses, and more: 'All of these things have been hard-coded in Dwarf Fortress, inaccessible to modders. Now the algorithms and data are available' Splitgate 2 is going back into beta: 1047 will keep the floundering FPS online and lay off more staff as it goes back to the drawing board RIP, Prince of Darkness: Ozzy Osbourne has died at age 76 HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards Best gaming laptop in 2025: I've put the best of this new generation head-to-head and we have a winner Best gaming chair in 2025: I've tested a ton of gaming chairs and these are the seats I'd suggest for any PC gamer Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Abiotic Factor review Alienware Area-51 gaming PC review Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 ARGB review Netgear Nighthawk RS600 review Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI gaming laptop review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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