Yeah, I did some digging. Some Steam reviews are claiming that the devs did a bait-and-switch, promised ALL future content for the season pass, then "changed the wording", which would be shitty. I'm thinking Great Order might have got the information 2nd hand from some of the people claiming there was a promise to get "all future DLCs".
However, some digging reveals screenshots over a year old on this reddit question:
https://www.reddit.com/r/playark/comments/8vahnl/can_anyone_explain_this_to_me_if_i_buy_the_season/The wording was never changed. Maybe clarified a little after the third DLC came out, but not changed in meaning. The season pass was already stated to contain the two existing DLCs, and the upcoming third DLC, plus it states you'll get occassional bonus in-game content. So, it always said 3 major DLCs plus some bonus items. But it says nothing in relation to them giving you free access to all future expansion packs they might come up with, and they haven't promised
not to make any DLCs after the ones mentioned as being part of the "season pass". And "season pass" itself implies additional seasons to come.
The new thing is a
fourth major DLC, and that was never covered in the Season Pass offering.
What I think the issue here is, is that once another DLC
exists people get butthurt about it, since they felt they're entitled to have all the content for free since they "paid" for the game that one time. People expect the "games as a service" model of delivery but with the traditional "retail box price" model of paying for it. Which is unrealistic.
It seems like online delivery has made people think things are "free", whereas the only real difference is that back in the 1990s games came stamped on 2-cents-worth of plastic CDs, and somehow that made it seem reasonable that you'd have to pay again for expansion packs since they were on different disks. Now, people have the base game and the DLC is 50 GB worth of new data, but somehow ... people don't think they should pay for any of it since it's "digital"?
if some other person has a DLC you don't have, you haven't actually lost anything. You still have the same game you paid for. Those people seem like they'd be happier if the new DLC was never made, rather than let other people play it if they can't personally play it.
Also, if the company doesn't have a revenue stream they
need to abandon the game in order to survive. So right, if that season pass covered ALL future DLCs then instead of making more DLCs, they'd need to start working on the sequel straight away in order to have any revenue coming in. You'd quickly find that they've terminated support and development on ARK and are launching ARK 2, which you'd need to buy all over again anyway. That's the "traditional" model everyone seems to yearn for when they complain about there being DLC. The alternative to the DLC model (and other models where they get ongoing revenue) is "launch and forget" / "slash and burn" development.