ark-server-tools: Is server configuration broken?

I run a dedicated server on CentOS 7 for my son and his friends. He asked me to update it last night. Since then, I’ve been trying to configure arkmanager and, by extension, the ark server with the configs I had running a couple months ago. So far, I’ve been unable to use arkmanager to configure any options in /etc/arkmanager/arkmanager.cfg or /etc/arkmanager/instances/main.cfg. An extremely basic one is MaxPlayers. I want to set it to 12 (or anything). I’ve added in /etc/arkmanager…

arkmanager.cfg:ark_MaxPlayers="12"
instances/main.cfg:ark_MaxPlayers="12"
instances/main.cfg:arkflag_MaxPlayers="12"
instances/main.cfg:arkopt_MaxPlayers="12"

…and none of this works. I added the arkflag and arkopt lines out of desperation and it still didn’t work. I see MaxPlayers is set in the process…

/opt/steam/ARK/instances/main/ShooterGame/Binaries/Linux/ShooterGameServer Ragnarok?RCONEnabled=True?RCONPort=32330?SessionName=ark.spolem.net?Port=7777?QueryPort=27015?ServerPassword=xxx?ServerAdminPassword=xxx?MaxPlayers=12?...

…but the status still shows 70 players. The Game.ini is empty and the GameUserSettings.ini gets rewritten every time I restart the server (despite there being a “version=5” in there).

Now, I realize that the ark dedicated server isn’t really great software/code in the first place so I don’t know where the problem lies, but I don’t seem to be able to get arkmanager to function like it should and/or did just a few months ago. Is there something I’m doing incorrectly here?