Amazon Game Studios has responded after a wave of Lost Ark players were banned for not playing the game in recent months.
Over the weekend (January 15) mods on the official Lost Ark subreddit shared a post that said “We’re getting a ton of posts from people that have not played the game in several months, claiming that they have been notified that their accounts were banned.”
A number of players then replied, saying they had been impacted by the unfair bans while on Twitter, it was a similar story.
“So Amazon Games, why does my wife have a banned Lost Ark account and a VAC ban to join it when the last time she even opened the game was February 2022? Seems a bit out of order to tarnish someone’s account for no reason out of the blue,” wrote one player.
“Got banned from Lost Ark despite not playing for almost an entire year. And now I have a game ban on my steam account. This is absolutely unacceptable behaviour,” added another.
Got Lost Ark on Steam like a year ago and played 5 hours apparently, and have never opened it since. So like did yall ban me for not playing enough or what lmao🤔 pic.twitter.com/SMOroBjIhy
— ✨👩🏻⚕️ Furry DVM Ryx 🦌🐾 (@ryxaroni) January 14, 2023
Yesterday (January 15) the publisher shared an update, acknowledging the issue and offering a fix.
“Greetings heroes of Arkesia. Following a recent wave of bot bans, we saw an increase in ban appeals from players who had been incorrectly impacted by these bans.”
“We determined the error that triggered these false bans, and have reversed [them] for all affected players regardless of whether a support ticket has been filed. This means any game bans or marks on your Steam account have been removed, or will be removed without penalty shortly.”
Yes! I like Lost Ark, but this has had me worried and I can’t check my account yet bc I’m away from my pc. I also gotta tell my Discord members about this too but can’t just yet! 😭 Im nervous! I did play November/December but idk the ban cut off pic.twitter.com/kmZdtZxl3d
— ❄️PopCultureSIMS❄️ (@SpriteBubbleGum) January 15, 2023
Announcing the bot ban earlier this month, Amazon wrote: “This week, many players have noticed a drop off in the number of concurrent users displayed in Lost Ark’s Steam stats. This change is the direct result of a roll out of a significant number of bot account bans, which utilised new and highly-effective tactics to target and remove bots from the game.”
“Players should expect these bot bans to have a positive impact on gameplay, including improved Market and Auction House experiences, decreased lag in heavily populated areas, and fewer bots present in the game,” it continued.
The studio went on to say that “in the coming months, we will continue to deploy large scale bot ban waves, implementing new methods of identifying and actioning against bots en masse.”
Last month it was confirmed that the Western version of Lost Ark’s Artist Class will look slightly different to its Korean counterpart, as Amazon Game Studios is making some redesigns to ensure that the game “feels approachable and representative of our Western players.”
In other news, Sony has made a two-hour trial of The Last Of Us Part 1 available for members of its PlayStation Plus Premium subscription to coincide with the premiere of HBO’s TV adaption.
