Change Alliance Settings in ARK: Evolved

Alliances link tribes together on your ARK: Survival Evolved server. If you want fewer of them, or smaller ones, three keys control it: one switches alliance creation off entirely, and two cap how many tribes and alliances are involved. None of them is on the Server Settings tab, so you edit the ini files in the File Manager.

Checked against the ARK Wiki's Server configuration page, October 2026.

The three keys

Pick the one that fits:

• No alliances at all: PreventTribeAlliances=True.
• Small alliances only: set MaxTribesPerAlliance to the largest alliance you want, for example 3.
• Limit how many alliances one tribe joins: set MaxAlliancesPerTribe.

The two caps have no default on the wiki, and the page does not say that a value of 0 means unlimited. To leave a cap off, leave the line out.

Edit the files

1. Click Stop in the panel and wait until the server is offline. ARK warns to close the game before changing its ini files, because edits made while it runs are removed.
2. Open the File Manager tab and go to ShooterGame/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/.
3. For PreventTribeAlliances, double-click GameUserSettings.ini, or select it and click Edit, and add the line under [ServerSettings].
4. For the two caps, open Game.ini the same way. It does not exist on a new server: create a plain text file with that name on your computer and click Upload. Make sure the [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] header is in it, then add the lines under it:

[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
MaxTribesPerAlliance=3
MaxAlliancesPerTribe=1

5. Click Save on each file, then Start the server.

How to manage your server files covers uploading and editing.

Common problems

1. Players can still create alliances: PreventTribeAlliances sits in GameUserSettings.ini, not Game.ini. Check the file, and that the server was stopped while you edited.
2. The caps do nothing: they belong in Game.ini under [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]. Under [ServerSettings] they are ignored.
3. PreventTribeAlliances keeps its old value: a value on the launch line beats the ini. If you typed it into Additional Arguments on the Startup tab, change it there. The wiki says the two caps are Game.ini only and have no effect on the command line, so this does not apply to them.

ARK ini settings explained covers how the two files differ.