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Genesis Part 1 ASA: Release Date, Delay, What Shipped

Posted 27 May 2026 Last updated 20 September 2026

ARK Genesis Part 1 — ocean biome with pirate ship and Palaeoctopus

📅 Genesis Part 1 has been out since 4 July 2026 (100 days). It is live on the BG Gaming cluster as one of our 12 maps. This page is the single home for the release date history, what shipped, the launch weekend, and how to play it here. Our earlier "delayed" and "is ARK down" posts now redirect to it.

When did ARK ASA Genesis Part 1 release?

ARK: Survival Ascended Genesis Part 1 went live on Friday 4 July 2026 on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The map and its new creature are free to every ASA owner. The paired Tides of Fortune pirate expansion released the same day as paid DLC.

That is not the date Wildcard announced. The full history:

Date What happened
25 June 2026 Original announced release date.
19 June 2026 Delayed one week in Community Crunch 512, citing "a few extra days to complete final certification." New date: 2 July.
2 July 2026 Delayed date arrives. Nothing launches. Community expected the usual ~1am UK go-live on the 3rd.
3 July, 11:48pm UK Wildcard: network coming online "in about an hour."
4 July, 2:21am UK Wildcard: "about an hour (really 🤗)."
4 July, 3:33am UK First Official servers up. About 27 hours after the community's expected go-live.
4 July, 5:32pm UK Entire Official Network taken offline for "a serious issue."
4 July, 6:03pm UK Confirmed: a critical exploit. Network-wide save rollback announced.
5 July, 4:29am UK Rollback applied: every Official save returned to 7:30pm Pacific on 3 July, the original deployment point.
5 July, 6:14am UK Official Network taken down a second time.
6 July v89.33 patch. Ship doors, Umbra movement, underwater vacuum walls, Palaeoctopus can no longer be tranq'd, "fixed a crash."

So if you are searching for "when did Genesis Part 1 come out": the honest answer is 4 July 2026, playable properly from around 6 July.

What is Genesis Ascended Part 1?

Genesis Part 1 is the Unreal Engine 5 rebuild of the original Genesis expansion from ARK: Survival Evolved. Wildcard were clear it was not a straight port: all five biomes were rebuilt, the ocean biome became a full naval sandbox, and the map shipped alongside a new paid pirate expansion.

The five biomes

  • Ocean. The headline change. No longer a small simulation zone: miles of open water with generated islands, fortresses and landmasses, built for ship-scale naval play.
  • Bog. Humid swampland with new art and revised level design.
  • Snow. Frozen tundra with the full UE5 lighting overhaul.
  • Volcano. Lava and ash.
  • Lunar. Low gravity, redesigned around the new physics tools.

The new creature: Palaeoctopus

The Palaeoctopus is the community-voted creature for the free map. A Late Cretaceous octopus relative with colour-changing camouflage, sheer-cliff climbing and crushing tentacle holds that drag survivors into restraint damage. Since v89.33 it cannot be tranquilised, so plan a different tame.

What is Tides of Fortune, and do I need it?

Bob's True Tales: Tides of Fortune is the paid story expansion that launched with Genesis Part 1. Pirate-themed, non-canon, and built around physical sailing ships with mountable cannons and modular customisation, plus pirate fortresses, the evolving Tidepup companion, and Karl Urban returning as Bob.

You do not need it to play Genesis. The map, the biomes and the Palaeoctopus are free. Tides of Fortune adds the ships, the Tidepup and the Bob storyline on top. Full breakdown on our Tides of Fortune page.

How the launch weekend went on Official

Badly, in a way that only ARK manages. Launch day servers came up 27 hours late, ran for just under 14 hours, then the whole Official Network was pulled for a critical exploit. Wildcard chose a network-wide save rollback over a forward patch, which tells you how bad the exploit was: every ship built, every Tidepup tamed and every milestone earned on Official that weekend was erased. Players who could not find their character afterwards were told to check their previous server and fill in a restoration form.

Wildcard never published what the exploit was. Their wording ("critical", "significant impact on fair play", severe enough for a rollback) is consistent with a duplication or state-corruption bug spreading faster than a hotfix could contain.

How the launch went on BG Gaming

BG Gaming ran Genesis Part 1 from day one. Wildcard pushed two server binaries in 48 hours (v89.31 on Friday morning, v89.38 overnight into Sunday), and both invalidated the memory offsets our shop, quests, decay tracker and cluster bot hook into. Each time cost a couple of hours to recover, with the servers staying up in bypass mode throughout.

  • Total BG downtime over the launch weekend: about 2 hours.
  • Save rollbacks on BG: none. Character-restoration forms: none.
  • Cross-map transfers: kept working.

That is the difference between running your own hardware and being on the Official Network. Nothing on the BG cluster was touched by Wildcard's rollback because nothing on the BG cluster is Wildcard's.

How to play Genesis Part 1 on BG Gaming today

Genesis is a full member of our 12-map cluster alongside The Island, Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, Ragnarok, Valguero, Lost Colony, Astraeos, Forglar, Bjarnheim and the Events server.

  1. Open ARK: Survival Ascended and go to the server browser.
  2. Tick Player Servers, untick Password Protected, search (BG).
  3. Join the Genesis map directly, or join any BG map and transfer across with the Depot Terminal (craftable at level 1).
  4. Come to our Discord and register your character for 50,000 free shop coins.

Rates are 5x taming and breeding, 2.5x harvest, 2x XP, wild dinos to level 150, crossplay across PC, Xbox and PS5, and the cluster has never wiped.

Genesis Part 1 quick FAQ

When did Genesis Part 1 release?

4 July 2026, after delays from 25 June and 2 July. Servers were rolled back and taken offline twice over the launch weekend; it was playable properly from about 6 July.

Is Genesis Part 1 free?

Yes. The map and the Palaeoctopus are free for everyone who owns ARK: Survival Ascended. Only Tides of Fortune (ships, Tidepup, Bob storyline) is paid.

Why was Genesis Part 1 delayed?

Wildcard cited final certification and "finishing touches." Last-minute delays of that shape are usually a console cert failure, though Wildcard did not confirm that.

Is this a remaster of Genesis 1?

Same map identity, rebuilt from scratch in Unreal Engine 5 with redesigned biomes, an expanded ocean and new naval gameplay. Wildcard called it a re-imagining rather than a port.

When is Genesis Part 2 coming?

Wildcard's stated plan is Q2 2027, alongside Galaxy Wars. No firm date. Given the track record above, expect it to move. Everything confirmed about Genesis Part 2 →

Is Genesis on BG Gaming?

Yes, since launch day. Search (BG) in the server browser.

Sources

First published 27 May 2026 as pre-launch coverage. Rewritten 20 September 2026 as the single Genesis Part 1 reference, folding in our 20 June delay post and 5 July launch-weekend timeline.