Is Ark crossplay? Survival Evolved vs Ascended, explained

Ark crossplay is partial, and the reason trips people up: the name covers two separate games. Ark: Survival Evolved and Ark: Survival Ascended each let some platforms play together but not all, and the two games never connect to each other.

So the real answer depends on which Ark you mean and where you're playing. Here's the split, game by game, with cross-progression handled on its own because that's the part people mix up most.

Two games, two answers

This is the Ark question we get asked most, and the honest version has a few moving parts. Wildcard remade the game, so there's an old Ark and a current Ark, and they run on different rules.

Ark: Survival Evolved is the original from 2015. Ark: Survival Ascended is the 2023 remaster, and it's the one most people are buying now. Ascended is a mainstay on Xbox, and it sits alongside our picks for the best survival games on Xbox.

They don't share servers, saves, or crossplay. Treat them as two games that happen to share a name.

Ark crossplay platform matrix

The tag in each row shows which game it belongs to, since "Ark" covers both. If you're checking whether Ark is cross platform for a specific pairing, find your two platforms here first.

Survival Evolved: who plays with who

In the original game, three groups can play together and two can't.

Xbox and the Microsoft Store PC version share the same Xbox Live backend, so they play together out of the box. This needs the Microsoft Store build, not Steam or Epic.

Steam and Epic PC players can also play together, but only through a dedicated server set up for cross-play, not through automatic matchmaking.

Mobile stays separate. Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition on iOS and Android connects those players to each other and to no one else.

PS4 and Nintendo Switch never had crossplay in Survival Evolved. Each stays locked to its own platform.

One note for 2026: official Wildcard servers for Survival Evolved shut down on September 30, 2023 when Ascended launched. Single-player, unofficial, and private or dedicated servers still work, and the mobile edition is unaffected, so the rules above still apply wherever the game is still running.

Survival Ascended: who plays with who

Ascended is the current game, and its Steam page markets "Cross-Platform Multiplayer." The details matter, though.

PS5 and Xbox Series X|S play together on official servers. Steam and Epic play together too, since both are PC storefronts.

The gap is PC to console. PC players on Steam or Epic cannot join PS5 or Xbox Series X|S on official servers right now, because Studio Wildcard disabled that crossplay on official PvP servers in January 2024 to fight cheating.

Private and dedicated servers are the workaround. A server owner can switch on full PC-and-console crossplay on a rented or unofficial server, even while official servers keep it off. If you want another survival co-op with cleaner rules, see Subnautica 2 crossplay.

Cross-progression and cross-save

Ark has no cross-progression between the two games. Survival Evolved and Survival Ascended are separate purchases with separate saves, so your character and progress in one don't appear in the other.

Inside a single game, the Tek Transmitter and Obelisk transfer system can move your character, dinos, and items between servers in the same cluster. It stays within like-for-like rules: PvE to PvE or PvP to PvP, and official to official or unofficial to unofficial.

That transfer system does not bridge Evolved and Ascended. A manual single-player save-file migration from Evolved to Ascended is possible, but that's a file operation you do yourself, not an official cross-save feature. Palworld takes the opposite approach, full crossplay but no cross-save, as our Palworld crossplay guide explains.

How to play together, and how to turn crossplay off

There's no crossplay toggle in Ark's menus. For the pairs that do work, you join or host a server that matches the group you want.

For PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on Ascended, that means an official server. For Steam-plus-Epic, or any PC-plus-console mix, that means a dedicated or private server set up for it.

There's no player-facing off switch either. The pools that don't connect are blocked at the server or platform level, not by a setting you flip, so "how to turn Ark crossplay off" really comes down to picking a single-platform server.

Neither game has built-in cross-platform voice chat. Players use console or PC party chat, or a third-party app like Discord.

What some guides still get wrong

A lot of older write-ups say Ark has full crossplay. Fallout 76 attracts the same stale claims, and our guide on whether Fallout 76 is crossplay sorts them out. That was never true for every platform, and it's less true now.

The big one is official Ascended servers. PC and console do not share them today, because Studio Wildcard disabled PC-to-console crossplay on official PvP servers in January 2024, and it hadn't been restored as of August 23, 2026. If a page tells you to hop onto an official server as a PC player to join your PS5 friend, that route is closed until Wildcard says otherwise.

The other trap is treating the two games as one. Evolved and Ascended don't crossplay with each other, and buying one doesn't carry your progress into the other. For the platform details, see our guide to whether DayZ is crossplay.