Ark players who had access on gold now have to get a different membership because gold is...

Ark wasn't included with Gold. Gold isn't even something you'd need for PC. You'd either have to had purchased the game or have had to had PC Game Pass or Game Pass Ultimate to be able to play it.

Your Gold membership will have been converted to Game Pass Core, so you shouldn't be any worse off.

Game Pass Core still gives you access to online play, weekly discounts/sales, access to past games you claimed via Games With Gold, plus it also gives you access to a catalogue of 36 games, kind of like a mini version of Game Pass.

Games With Gold has ended, so no new games will be offered via that, but any past games you claimed can still be played as long as you have either Game Pass Core or Ultimate.

We have discovered that thanks to my kid owning the game I don't even need a subscription at all to play on our server from the p.c. I have only ever had the gold subscription. Now that the game is on the drive I can click play instead of get game pass 😁 I had 4 separate Xbox subscriptions to pull of playing together on both p.c and console. Apparently all I needed was one account to own and download the game on our devices. I'm no longer upset but relieved 😌 Much cheaper to buy the game than to pay subscriptions. I think I assumed I needed the "live" subscription to connect with online games... perhaps this only works because we are hosting our own server? I won't ask anymore questions now that I'm not going to have to pay again and again. Happy face ☺

I have upgraded to a new p.c. and now when logging on to both my Microsoft store and my Xbox app my only options are to purchase the game or purchase a game pass... this confused me because when I go to my subscriptions it is telling me I have core game pass and not game pass... I had gold before and the game was always available to me to play. Why now that I have core it is not available without game pass. I'm so confused. I only purchased a gold subscription because it was the only way the Ark survival would let me play. Sad face

I suspect you either had Game Pass for PC or Game Pass Ultimate, which would have given you access to the game, but you mistakenly assumed it was via Gold.

Unfortunately, your Gold subscription has been upgraded to a Game Pass Core subscription, which is aimed at consoles.

You have 2 options really: -

1. If you have a lot of time left on your Game Pass Core subscription, you can pay for 1 month of Game Pass Ultimate to convert your Core to Ultimate on a 3:2 ratio, so, for example, 12 months of Core would convert to 8 months of Ultimate. Not ideal, but it would get you back up and running and your Core sub wouldn't go to waste.

2. If you only paid for a short amount of Gold and that got converted over to Core, you could just subscribe to Game Pass for PC and let your Core sub lapse as it's not needed.

Oh yeah, if you fire up the Game Pass app on PC, you should see a "Give PC Game Pass" button, where you can gift 5 one month subs to people. You could use one of those for yourself, which would get you back up and running with Ark for 1 month without you having to spend any money. If, for some reason, it doesn't let you gift it to yourself, message me over Xbox Live and I'll gift you 1 month. EDIT - Actually, I think that might be for new subscribers only, so it may not be an option for you.