Sony paid $3.5 million to get Ark: Survival Evolved on PlayStation Plus for 5 weeks

To make Ark: Survival Evolved available on PlayStation Plus for free for just five weeks, Sony paid a whopping $3.5 million.

That's according to a newly surfaced SEC report which was first spotted by Ark YouTuber GP. The report offers a rare look at how much console makers may pay to offer a game through their platform's subscription service, and both PlayStation and Xbox are mentioned in this case. 

Ark: Survival Evolved was available via PlayStation Plus for just over a month beginning March 1, 2022, but the deal was actually struck in November 2021. Long before that, however, Xbox entered an agreement to bring the game to Xbox Game Pass, where the deluxe edition of the game is still available today.  

"The agreement was initially made between the parties in November 2018 and valid through December 31, 2021," the SEC report notes. "The agreement was subsequently amended in June 2020 to extend the Ark 1 Game Pass perpetually effective January 1, 2022."

Interestingly, the file also confirms that a new deal was struck "to put Ark 2 on Game Pass for three years."

The report specifies $2.5 million related to Ark 1's "perpetual" Game Pass license and $2.3 million related to Ark 2. It's unclear if this is absolutely everything Xbox paid during this multi-year agreement, but it's safe to assume that Xbox got far more time for its money compared to PlayStation, which paid roughly $700,000 a week for its PlayStation Plus offer. 

The price of subscription placement can vary wildly between games, but this is also one of the few deals that shows both PlayStation and Xbox agreements, making it an interesting peek behind the curtain of the games industry's ever-escalating content war. 

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