Over a Million Lost Ark Accounts Banned for Using Various Bots
Lost Ark has been a big hit, ever since it came out onto the European and American servers. While this means that there have been long waiting queues for those who want to play, it seems that the creators have come up with their own solution for the problem.
Which came in the form of banning accounts. Not out of malice, nor out of some material misunderstanding. But for bot usage.
Bots are something that is fairly common (sad to say) when it comes to Multi-Player Online games (MMOs). Certainly, there’s been a bot problem with Amazon’s New World, for example. And players for Lost Ark have been complaining on forums about how the game seems to be saturated with bots. So Smilegate RPG, the creators of Lost Ark, have looked into the issue.
And this week, Smilegate has announced that they have banned over a million accounts that have been deemed illegitimate. While it was possible that there are some who have been accidentally banned from the crossfire, Smilegate had said that if the at has happened, to reach out and ask so they can reinstate their account.
Our team has been hard at work on crafting tools and methods to identify and remove bots from the game. Today (3/4) we will be removing over a million illegitimate accounts that have been determined to be running bots.
Complete details below!https://t.co/SQktz7IM56
— Lost Ark (@playlostark) March 4, 2022
“Following launch, botting has been a growing issue for Lost Ark,” Smilegate stated on a forum post. “Our team has been hard at work on crafting effective tools and methods to identify and remove bots from the game. As the result of this work, today (3/4) we will be permanently removing over a million illegitimate accounts from the game that have been determined to be running bots.”
And from the sounds of it, there’s already been an effect. According to a player on Twitter, the European Server’s queue has gone down from over 8,000, to 950.
“Maintaining a fair and fun gameplay experience for our players is a top priority for the team,” said Smilegate in a posted statement. “While we intend to make a massive impact with this ban wave, we know that there is more work to be done and want players to know that this is only one step in what will be an active and ongoing process. Looking ahead, we will continue our work on detecting and removing botting, cheating, and harmful behavior from Lost Ark at scale, which includes expanding our anti-cheat tools, improving bot identification methods, and rolling out more ban waves as frequently as is necessary.”