[Update: Maybe Not] Snail Games Seems To Imply That ARK: Survival Evolved Online Will Launch In The West

Update: The statement has since been revised with the removal of any mention of tests that may or may not occur in North America or Europe. The new statement is as follows.

Developed by the snail "Ark: survival evolution Online" will be January 1, 2017 for the first round of testing, the snail company will be authorized to Taiwan Butterfly Digital Entertainment Limited in the Asia Pacific region to open the test.

The original article is as follows.

Snail Games announced today that its free-to-play version of ARK: Survival Evolved, ARK: Survival Evolved Online, has been licensed to Taiwanese publisher Butterfly Digital Entertainment, which will be handling the Beta test in the Asia-Pacific region, and that there will be 150 Asia-Pacific servers available during the first Beta test, each of which will be one of three types of server: "civilized" or PvE, "war" or limited PvP, and "savage" or open PvP. But that's not the most surprising news today. You see, that same announcement seemed to imply that the free-to-play version may one day launch in North America and Europe.

The Google Translated version of the exact statement is as follows.

Developed by the snail "Ark: survival evolution Online" will be January 1, 2017 for the first round of testing, snail companies will be authorized to Taiwan Butterfly Digital Entertainment Limited in the Asia Pacific region to open the test, the United States and European players will not Time testing range, the follow-up test for the region's time will be notified.

The statement seems to imply that the United States—which may mean all of North America—and Europe will be receiving their own Beta tests sometime in the future as part of a "follow-up test." If this statement means what we think it does, it would be quite odd. ARK: Survival Evolved is already out as a self-published buy-to-play title in the West. Why would Studio Wildcard want Snail Games to launch a free-to-play version in the West, as well? Wouldn't they be directly competing with each other? Furthermore, wouldn't one of them inevitably become far less populated than the other?

It remains to be seen whether this statement means exactly what we think it does. The Chinese version will enter Open Beta on January 1st, with the client being made available to pre-load sometime in the next 24 hours.

Do you want to see the free-to-play ARK: Survival Evolved Online launch in the West?