yaaass.com · ARK: Survival Ascended · Windows · Self‑hosted
Run an ARK server
without the suffering.
YAAASS is a self-hosted control plane for ARK: Survival Ascended — scheduling, config, clusters, updates and backups for your whole fleet from one browser tab. Ten servers off a single game install, config that shows you where every value came from, and rate changes that land live without kicking anybody off the map.
- 1install, ten servers
- 0restarts to change rates
- 3config layers, traced
- 1,770automated tests
Windows today · ASA only · LAN-first by design · your saves never leave your box.
What makes us special
Six things a panel
usually can't say.
The rest of this page is a feature list. This is the architecture underneath it — the handful of invariants everything else was built around.
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01
Restarting the panel doesn't restart ARK
Stop, restart or self-update YAAASS and every running game server stays up. Processes are re-adopted by PID on boot, and the invariant is held by tests rather than by a slogan. Most managers treat “restart the panel” and “restart every server” as the same operation, and your players pay for it.
✓ panel restarted — 3 servers never noticed -
02
Rate changes with no restart
YAAASS runs its own Dynamic Config endpoint, so multipliers, color sets and MOTD land live and are forced immediately over RCON. A 2× weekend stops costing you a log-off notice — this is the one that most changes how you actually run a server.
> ForceUpdateDynamicConfig — applied, 0 players dropped -
03
Config you can trace
Every effective value resolves Calendar > Cluster > Server, with a per-server protection pin that outranks even the calendar. The UI shows the value and where it came from, so a cluster-wide event composes predictably instead of silently clobbering the one setting you cared about.
2.5× ← weekend_event (calendar) -
04
Ten servers, one game install
One master install, every server deployed by hard link — so the second server costs megabytes instead of another 100 GB, and a single game update covers the whole cluster. Adopting a hand-rolled install is non-destructive: it copies only
ShooterGame/Savedand marks the server hardlink-only.10 servers · 1 install · 1 update -
05
It can safely update itself
Signed Ed25519 release manifests, an atomic version flip, and a health gate that rolls back automatically if the new build fails to re-adopt every running server within 180 seconds. The job that normally needs a maintenance window and a nervous admin happens unattended.
manifest.sig ✓ rollback armed -
06
No fake green checkmarks
We deleted the ARK Server List check entirely rather than keep a feature that could only ever report “nothing to conclude”, and left the decision record explaining why. ARK operators have been burned by tools that guess; every status here is a measurement.
removed: ark_server_list_check (see TODO.md)
The honest fine print: Windows only (there's no Linux build, and a fleet can't be migrated off Windows either), ASA only (Evolved isn't on the roadmap), the dashboard is built for your LAN, and the game updater still wraps DepotDownloader while an in-house replacement is designed but unbuilt. We'd rather you read that here than discover it on install day.
Layered config & provenance
One value per setting — and it tells you where it came from.
This is the piece we'd lead with. Every setting resolves through three layers, Calendar > Cluster > Server, and the UI shows the winner, the losers and the reason. No opening four INI files to work out why taming is 2.5× on a Tuesday.
- A 2× weekend can't fight the one setting you hand-tuned
- Per-server protection pins outrank even the calendar
- Scheduled events compose predictably instead of clobbering
- Every save is backed up before the value changes
Nobody has to remember what they typed, or which of the four INI files won. The answer is on the screen, directly next to the setting.
Zero to Island
From nothing to a live server without touching a command line.
No SteamCMD incantations. No port-forwarding forum archaeology. No GameUserSettings.ini at 2am.
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01
Install YAAASS
One Windows installer on the machine that will host your servers. It brings its own runtime, so there's no Python to wrangle, installs itself as a Windows service, and opens the dashboard on your LAN.
> yaaass setup — service installed -
02
Pick your maps
Choose The Island, Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, Ragnarok — whatever's out. YAAASS downloads the files once into the master install, deploys each map as a hard link, assigns ports, and wires the cluster ID for you.
The IslandScorched EarthAberration+ mods -
03
Hit deploy
Servers boot on a staggered start order instead of all at once, mods sync from CurseForge, backups schedule themselves, and the status board goes green. Share the join link. Go play.
✓ 3 servers online — cluster healthy
It's a web app
Runs on your box.
Opens in any browser.
Phone on the couch, laptop in the office, tablet in bed — the dashboard is responsive down to a phone screen and works in any browser on your network. Full power everywhere, four roles (viewer, operator, admin, owner), ten languages, and eight themes so your dashboard doesn't have to look like our dashboard.
Dashboard
Overview of all servers and system status
Backups & recovery
A backup you can actually restore from.
Scheduled captures that wait for the save file to stop changing before they take it — so you never store a torn save. Offsite copies to a second path, retention windows, duplicate-day dedupe, in-place restore, and a fleet-wide backup-all for when you're about to do something brave.
- Quiesced captures — it waits for the save to settle, every time
- Offsite copy to a second path, plus retention windows and dedupe
- Restore in place, or pull a save into a different server
- Backup-all across the fleet, and portable export/import ZIPs
Every config save is backed up before it lands, so a bad edit is a rollback instead of a disaster. Roll a single tribe's data or the whole map back to a moment ago.
For your community
Your leaderboard, on your own website.
YAAASS serves a public player feed that's CORS-open, needs no auth, and has every netid stripped before the response leaves your box. Point your site at it and the leaderboard keeps itself current — no bot, no scraper, no copy-pasting numbers into a spreadsheet.
- CORS-open JSON — fetch it and render it your way
- No key, no auth, no bot account in your Discord
- Netids stripped server-side, so you're never publishing them
- Playtime, login counts and per-player history to rank on
The JSON feed is live today; the drop-in widget is the part still being finished. When it ships we'll print the real endpoint here instead of an ellipsis.
The whole lifecycle
Everything you were doing
with eleven batch files.
Eighteen things, three chapters, all of them shipped — no roadmap cards dressed up as features.
Fleet, config & updates
Run it, schedule it, keep it current. 6 features-
01
Fleet ops & the queue
Start, stop and restart per server, or the whole fleet at once through a FIFO queue you can reorder, cancel per-server, or abort mid-flight. A staggered start order means ten servers don't slam the CPU in the same second, and auto-start on boot means a reboot isn't a morning of clicking.
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02
Clusters, natively
Built for multi-map from the first line of code: generated cluster IDs, shared mod lists and config, a cluster directory override, per-cluster mod config templates with preview and apply, and cross-server cluster chat.
one cluster ID to rule them all -
03
Calendar & scheduled events
Rate multipliers, color sets, MOTD, dino wipes, RCON commands, mod changes, ASA active events and transfer unlocks — singly or merged into one window, aimed at a server or a whole cluster, recurring weekly, previewable, undoable and retried on failure.
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04
Config, made human
Structured, labelled editors for
GameUserSettings.iniandGame.ini— real min/max ranges, map pickers, multipliers — with a raw-INI escape hatch for anything not modelled. Array and repeated keys survive round-trips, and mod-owned sections get editors of their own. -
05
Mods, without the archaeology
CurseForge discovery with a cached catalog and thumbnails, per-server and cluster-shared mod lists with merge-on-import and dedupe, and creature/item catalogs so autocomplete knows what a Cryopod is. ARK Server API plugins install per server with version tracking.
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06Game updates that wait for empty servers
Updates stage into the master install and roll out only to servers with nobody on them, with a major-version restart rule when a patch can't hot-adopt. Builds come from Steam's public manifest API, every step is precheckable, and the whole fleet can roll back to a previous manifest.
Data, community & safety
Your saves, your players, your front door. 6 features-
07
Backups, restore & portability
Quiesced captures that wait for the save to stop changing, offsite copies to a second path, retention windows, daily dedupe and in-place restore — plus a portable export ZIP (saves, configs, manifest, cluster metadata) to move a server between machines.
save → quiesce → snapshot → offsite -
08
Players, playtime & history
Session and per-player playtime history, leaderboards by playtime and logins, kick, ban and unban over RCON, a served
banlist.txt, and player aliases so a rename doesn't fork one person into two. -
09
Embed your leaderboard
A public feed your community site can read directly — CORS-open, auth-free, netids stripped — plus a drop-in widget for the people who'd rather not write any JavaScript at all.
put it on the clan page. they love that. -
10
Networking that sets itself up
Automatic UPnP and NAT-PMP port mapping with auto-fix and a diagnostics view, port-conflict detection the moment you create a server, reachability probes from the public internet, Windows firewall rules, and a watcher that tells you when your public IP moved out from under you.
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11
Alerts that actually arrive
Discord bots and webhooks, ntfy (including self-hosted, token- or Basic-auth-protected topics), Pushover with a sound picker, and Pushbullet — each with independent per-event toggles and a Test button that really saves and validates the credentials. Delivery is off-thread, so a dead provider never delays a shutdown.
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12Security & multi-user
bcrypt passwords, TOTP two-factor, four roles from viewer up to owner, login throttling, forced password change on the seeded account, and credentials masked on API output — plus the boring-but-real guards: zip-slip protection on import, upload size caps and path-traversal checks on backup filenames.
Resilience & polish
For when it breaks, and for when it doesn't. 6 features-
13
Crash guard
A watchdog watches every server process: a hang or a crash gets a clean restart, and the event feed plus the log tail tell you what happened before your players ask. Game updates that fail their prechecks never touch a running server.
> watchdog: process gone → clean restart -
14
Restart warnings players can see
Shutdowns run a visible countdown you can cancel if you change your mind, and every server carries its own “restart needed” reason naming the field that changed — so a restart is a decision, not a surprise.
no surprise reboots. not even one. -
15
Observability & support
A health summary with a shareable health code, a live event feed, log tailing and a log-file browser, system stats, an activity log with actor attribution, and a troubleshooting tab with per-port reachability checks. When something's wrong, you get the fish, not the fishing trip.
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16
Eight themes, one dashboard
YAAASS, Deep Sea, Ember, Jungle, Synthwave and Neon Grid for the night shift — plus Daylight and Material for when you're fixing things at noon. Swapping is instant, no reload, and each admin's pick sticks to their own browser.
YAAASS Deep Sea Ember Jungle Synthwave Neon Grid Daylight Material -
17
Ten languages, fully self-hosted
English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese. The dashboard never leaves your LAN unless you expose it — and when it does, it speaks your admins' language.
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18Install, deploy, self-update
A real Windows installer wrapped around a PyInstaller bundle, so the target box needs no Python. A browser setup wizard pulls DepotDownloader, the master install and firewall rules; the app runs as a Windows service with an SCM restart policy, and the resident supervisor does signed updates with an atomic flip.
Notes from the admin desk
Pricing
Price? Still arguing about it. Watch this space.
We're still landing the exact model — the shape of it, the number, all of it. What we know for sure: the core suite runs on your hardware, on your box, with your data.
- Unlimited servers and clusters
- Fleet scheduling, config and backups
- Live config changes with no restarts
- Signed self-update with automatic rollback
- Ten languages, four roles, self-hosted
- Deep Discord bots & player portals
- Off-site backup providers
- Advanced analytics & economy tools
- Third-party devs get a real API
Core pricing isn't set yet — not the number, not the shape of the deal. Plugins are their own separate question mark too.
Straight answer: we haven't decided yet. Get on the list and you'll be told before anyone else — and early adopters get the good deal either way. Also true: the licensing code exists, but the activation backend isn't switched on yet, so there is genuinely nothing to buy today.
Questions
The things you were
about to ask.
Do I need a VPS or can I run this at home?
Home is the whole point. If your PC can run the game, it can host with YAAASS. The app handles service install, port setup, and gives you a join link. It scales up to rented Windows boxes and dedicated hardware from the exact same UI.
What does it run on?
Windows, and only Windows. YAAASS is built against ARK: Survival Ascended's Windows server binaries, service model and file layout from the ground up: there's no Linux build, and no cross-platform cluster migration either — a fleet stays on Windows, and moving one to another OS isn't something we support or plan to. We'd rather say that plainly than ship a half-working port and call it cross-platform.
If YAAASS restarts or updates itself, do my servers go down?
No — and that's the whole design. Running ARK processes are re-adopted by PID when the panel comes back, the same way they are after a self-update. It's held in place by tests, which is why we're comfortable printing it on a landing page.
Does it work with my existing server?
Yes, and adoption is non-destructive. Point YAAASS at an existing install and it copies only ShooterGame/Saved, hard-links the clean files, and never touches the original. Adopted servers are marked hardlink-only so a later relink can't silently bloat them into full 100 GB copies.
Can I change rates without kicking everyone off?
Yes. YAAASS runs its own Dynamic Config endpoint and forces a refresh over RCON, so multipliers, color sets and MOTD apply live. Changes that genuinely do need a restart are flagged separately, with a shutdown warning players can see and you can cancel — nothing sneaks up on the map mid-raid.
What updates the game, and can I undo it?
Steam's public manifest API tells YAAASS what build is current; the download itself still runs through DepotDownloader today, with an in-house replacement designed but not built. Either way updates stage into the master install, roll out only to empty servers, and can be rolled back to a previous manifest.
Can I manage it from outside my house?
The dashboard is built for your LAN and doesn't ship a public login page, so treat remote access as your call and your responsibility: put it behind a reverse proxy with TLS, or use a VPN — which is what we'd pick. Your saves, configs and backups never leave your box either way.
Is my data going anywhere?
Your saves, configs and backups stay on your box, going wherever you point them — that part's not changing. The app may check in with some anonymized health/usage data to make monitoring and alerts better, and there could be an optional account down the line for things like remote access. Nothing gets sold, and nothing's required to just run a server.
What about ARK: Survival Evolved?
Not supported, and it won't be. YAAASS is built around Ascended's server binaries and file layout from the ground up — legacy ASE isn't on the roadmap.
When can I actually download it?
Soon — and "soon" here means a real build, not a landing page with a mailing list attached to nothing. Drop your email and you'll get exactly one message when it ships.
Yet Another ARK Ascended Server Suite
Because ARK is hard.
You deserve easy.
Download Soon!
Be first — one email, on launch day, then never again
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