Lost Ark players were left reeling over the weekend (Monday 16th January) after those with inactive accounts found themselves caught up in a wave of bot bans.
January’s hit on bots was a hefty affair, with Amazon Games stating that “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”.
However, a large number of Steam users who hadn’t played the MMO action role-playing game were caught out by these ‘highly-effective tactics’ and found themselves slapped with a ban.
These bans appear publicly on players’ profiles – and it’s safe to say people were not happy about it.
Since the sudden bans were dropped over the weekend, players have taken to Lost Ark’s Steam page to complain – with more than 1,300 negative reviews left on on Saturday, and more than 1,000 on Sunday.
Now game developers have taken to the official Lost Ark forum to share an update on the situation, writing: “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.
“In the meantime, you are still welcome to submit a Ban Appeal ticket to Customer Support so that the team can more quickly assist with restoring your account and removing all penalties.
“Thank you for your reports and patience as we work to make this right with affected players.”
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