Smilegate RPG and Amazon Games are banning more than one million “illegitimate” Lost Ark accounts for running bots. The ban wave is happening today (March 4) due to the developers creating the means to identify and remove bots from the game.
“Maintaining a fair and fun gameplay experience for our players is a top priority for the team,” the Lost Ark devs say. “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 behaviour 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.”
However, the team does warn that a small number of players may be erroneously identified as bots. “We have taken every step possible to prevent that from being the case, but it is possible that edge cases could occur,” the devs say.
If that happens to you, the support site is here.
Smilegate RPG and Amazon Games admit that botting has been a growing problem for the MMORPG since it launched last month. Chats swiftly filled up with gold spam following release, though we’ve also seen bots hog resources by farming various areas more recently.
In other Lost Ark news, Guardian Raids and Abyssal Dungeons have been nerfed to make the endgame less “tedious than fun”, while a new story episode and Abyss Raids are coming later this month in the March update.
If you’re getting into this one yourself, check out our Lost Ark’s beginner’s guide.