The Survival of the Fittest game mode was released in early access as a free standalone game with no microtransactions; it was scheduled to fully launch in mid 2016, but was eventually merged back to the main game as the development team did not wish to monetize on its release, and wanted to ensure that modders can apply the development kit of Survival Evolved to create mods for Survival of the Fittest ARK Survival Evolved Items. This outstanding sense of place and mood is offset by the sheer difficulty of everything that you have to do, the spectacular amounts of time necessary to experience even a tenth of what the game has to offer, and the randomness of death constantly destroying everything that you have built.

There will be various eSports tournaments of the game mode, with a prize pool of US $50,000 ARK Items. Players who played Survival of the Fittest before it was merged back into the main game can continue to play the game without paying an extra cost, while new players must pay before getting access to it. It will be available for every player who purchases the main game. One of the game modes, Survival of the Fittest, was released as a free standalone game in March 2016. Egypt-based developer Instinct Games was hired to facilitate the game's development. Several expansions to the game have also been released as downloadable content: The Center, Primitive Plus, Scorched Earth, Ragnarok, and Aberration.