Studio Wildcard announces ARK: Survival of the Fittest, a free multiplayer spinoff of ARK: Survival Evolved, the dinosaur-infested survival game. They call this a MOSA (multiplayer online survival arena) "that pits as many as 72 combatants against one another in spontaneous Hunger Games-style competitions within a closed battlefield." They also say it's now available on Steam early access, though it doesn't seem to have actually appeared just yet (it looks like they expect it to show up here). The launch video offers a look, and here's word:

Built for the burgeoning wild west of eSports competition, ARK: SotF challenges gamers to fight each other and the Jurassic environment that players loved in ARK: Survival Evolved. However, rather than a huge open world to survive in, this newly refactored game is an epic dinosaur survival arena with a continually shrinking “ring of death.” In the end, survivors are eventually pushed into an epic final showdown where only one “Tribe” will make it out alive.

Survivors can form one- to six-person Tribes with the options to choose Unofficial and Official (Ranked) servers, and a variety of game-lengths and sizes in which to play. Players will start in the base forest environment introduced in the original ARK: Survival Evolved, with new environments and creatures introduced regularly as the game evolves. Dedicated eSport ranking, matchmaking, reward, and tournament features make ARK: SotF readily accessible to all players.

As part of the ongoing Survival of the Fittest eSport competitive initiative, each month the Top-10 Ranked players in each game mode’s "Survivor League" will be awarded cash prize winnings corresponding to their Ranked placement. The ongoing Rankings for these elite titles will be visible in real-time on SurviveTheArk.com at launch.