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ARK: Survival Evolved, the still incredibly popular open-world game from Studio Wildcard is now on Stadia and along with a few other games it's free for Stadia Pro subscribers.

Much like ARK ports to other platforms, their version on Stadia has plenty of issues. ARK has a history of being buggy, and their native desktop Linux version is pretty awful. It doesn't seem like their Stadia port is much better with graphical issues, graphics that look quite poor in a lot of places and yes even plenty of stuttering at times too. So, a pretty standard port of ARK then. I can tell you for sure after trying it myself on Stadia, it looks nothing like the trailer:

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If you were to pick up ARK based on that trailer — wow you would be seriously disappointed. The render distance for objects is ridiculously low too so it's a constant pop-in. Just terrible.

As for other games on Stadia today is the start of a fresh month so here's what you can claim with Stadia Pro today:

  • ARK: Survival Evolved
  • Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition
  • Little Big Workshop
  • Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
  • Wave Break

Additionally the game Blue Fire is sticking around in Stadia Pro, after Google previously announced it would be leaving. So presumably it was popular enough for Google to want it to stick around for more people to claim it.

In other Stadia news the subscription service Ubisoft+ is now available on Stadia for all of the regions Stadia covers and Watch Dogs: Legion will be getting a free weekend starting Friday for Stadia Pro subs. You can also now change your Stadia name twice a year a bit more easily, so you're not stuck with something silly.

On top of that they've brought back the $10/£10 credit if you didn't previously use it as a new, current, or former Stadia Pro customer and there's a big Indie Game sale going on Stadia so maybe you can pick something up.

Play Stadia on Linux on Stadia.com with a Chromium browser.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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dubigrasu Sep 3, 2021
Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: dubigrasuNot impressed with the new additions, well, talking about ARK and Darksiders.
I can live somewhat with the ARK graphics while playing on a TV, but those 1 sec hangs from time to time, damn.
Darksiders looks OK, but both games are running at 30 FPS (or even less sometimes, to my eyes at least), which is ridiculous. I'm not a gazillion fps snob, but come on.

I don't think they're running any game through Proton/Wine/etc (though they do use DXVK), but sometimes I wish they did, because at least: a) some game would run better (ARK in this case) and b) less work and time required to get the games ready.
At this pace they'll be unable to deliver those 100 games in 2021 as they're promised. Not sure what's the hold up (porting time or publishing rights?) but it doesn't seem to be happening.

Darksiders II was locked to 30fps on PS4 and going by the steam discussions it seems to have huge frame rate problems on Windows.
True.
The problems that I had with Darksiders II on Windows were indeed related to variations in fps, but at reasonable settings is still capable to stay well above 60. On Stadia though, the quality it runs at doesn't justify IMO the low fps. At times is a slideshow, is just miserable.
And even when games are locked at 30fps, is not the end of the world, ESO for example is also locked at 30 on Stadia but is, ugh...playable and consistent, while these two are just useless.
Now sure, for someone used with a 30fps locked console, you will have a higher tolerance to 15-20fps from time to time, but IMO whatever performance standards consoles might have, shouldn't apply to Stadia ports.
It seems to me that QA is going downhill on Stadia, they have proven initially that they can deliver high quality ports (Destiny and Division for example), but lately they seems to compromise more an more.
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