ARK: Survival Evolved’s massive Survival of the Fittest tournament starts today!

ARK: Survival Evolved might have been the open-world, survival Dinosaur game we've always been waiting for. And while the launch might have been a little bumpy with all the various optimization issues, it seems like most of that has been fixed, and now players can focus on what's really important: Surviving!

Today marks the start of a rather unique event in ARK, called Survival of the Fittest. Anyone with a copy of the game can participate by joining one of the servers with up to five other players for your tribe, and duke it out against other tribes to see who will be the last one standing.

Don't have the game? You can always just watch the Twitch stream where over 230 contestants will be duking it out against one another. What's even cooler is that fans watching can vote to decide on the next event in the game, whether it's the deadly Acid Rain, the I Love You, You Love Me boost which raises mate affinities, Hail to the King which drops a powerful explosive item next to each player, or Food of the Gods which is a loot crate containing instant-taming feed.

Everyone with a copy can enter during the following days:

• Thursday, September 24, and Saturday, September 26
• Tuesday, September 29; Thursday, October 1, and Saturday, October 3
• Tuesday, October 6, and Thursday, October 8
• Tuesday, October 13, and Thursday, October 15

The Winning Tribes from the Preliminary Rounds will be exclusively invited it to ‘The Last Stand Pre-Championships,’ being held from Noon – 8pm EST, on the following days, from which the top 160 finale contestants will be calculated:

• Saturday, October 17 and Tuesday, October 20

Prizes for ‘The Last Stand’ October 24th Championship Include:

• First Place Winning Tribe receives: $24,000 (split six ways)
• Second Place Winning Tribe receives: $12,000 (split six ways)
• Third Place Winning Tribe receives: $6,000 (split six ways)
• Each of ‘The Last Stand’ 230 entrants receives a $100 Steam Gift Card
• All three Championship Winning Tribes will receive an in-game Gold/Silver/Bronze Trophy Structure Skin, customized with their Tribe details, for everyone to marvel at with envy!