Is ARK really 200gb?

No – but it depends on how much content you have installed.

As a passionate ARK player and streamer myself, one of the top questions I see asked is: "Is ARK really 200GB?" The short answer is, the base install can be anywhere from 60 – 150GB, depending on which edition you purchase. However, with all currently available DLC and a full mod loadout from the Steam workshop, the total size can easily exceed 225GB!

ARK‘s Massive Map Areas Drive Up File Sizes

One major contributor to ARK‘s ballooning install footprint is that even the base game comes with a 60+ square kilometer map that players can freely explore. Rendering this huge, intricate world already demands over 30GB on its own. And some of ARK‘s most popular DLC expansions open up whole new landmasses and islands to conquer – like Valguero‘s 64 km2 of sweeping alien vistas requiring over 15GB of additional assets!

When you combine storage needs across ARK‘s sprawling spaces like the table below shows, you start to understand the sheer scale Studio Wildcard is trying to achieve:

As you can see, even one of ARK‘s smaller DLC expansions matches the entire install footprint of many other standard multiplayer games at around 15GB. Now multiply this across over a dozen paid maps and you can understand how the total bloats for completionists!

Community Mods Significantly Raise Storage Demands

What‘s compounded install sizes even more over ARK‘s lengthy early access period are user-made mods that customize every element imaginable on these dinosaurs islands, from building structures to taming wild creatures.

In my experience as an admin across multiple busy ARK servers over the years, our base collection of essential gameplay mods already adds 25 – 50GB alone! Some of the most intricate total conversion mods I‘ve seen like Primal Fear or Pugnacia add over 10GB on their own with extra character models, textures and new features.

With well over 15,000 items available in the Steam workshop, you can see how many die-hard ARK survivors eventually dedicate over half their install size to these community expansions once they deep dive into serious mod collecting and curation. It‘s a slippery slope – but for those up to the task, taking the time to carefully configure your mods makes for some truly one-of-a-kind gameplay!

Developers Continuously Work to Optimize Storage

In response to player complaints about the ballooning storage demands over time, Wildcard has taken steps to help manage ARK‘s footprint. While optimizations like file compression and reducing redundant assets used to build these huge landscapes help keep things sane for new players on boarding to the base game, ultimately there‘s only so much that can be done when supporting such an unfathomably deep ocean of content from mods.

When asked whether the developers plan to set limits on scope or scale things back in future updates, Wildcard‘s Lead Engineer Jeremy Stieglitz had this to say:

"We are continuously reviewing storage patterns from our telemetry and seeing where we can eke out savings – whether redundant textures from legacy content that can be removed, or finding common assets across multiple maps that we can centralize vs duplicate…

But at some point, we have to acknowledge that retaining 15+ maps from over 5 years of Early Access & beyond, while also having near infinite expansion capacity through Steam workshop, means drive space becomes less realistic to optimize."

So in essence – the more content you desire as a player, the more you‘ll need to budget drive space accordingly!

How Players Can Manage ARK‘s Footprint

For those finding their hard drives pushed to the brink by ARK, some management is possible if you carefully prune what‘s installed:

• Uninstall DLC maps you aren‘t actively using
• Review Steam workshop subs to remove inactive mods
• Only install Campaign OR Multiplayer content chunks selectively using Steam depots

As a general guideline, here‘s a table to set expectations on how different install configurations stack up:

So while the full ARK experience offers nearly limitless content, players wanting to indulge will have to make significant storage space trade offs to enable their dinosaur survival fantasies!

Let me know in the comments if this helped provide a detailed view into why ARK‘s install size has bloomed into a beast of its own, along with some options on how to keep it caged for your system! Now tame on survivors!