Lost Ark Ban Wave Removes Over 1 Million "Illegitimate Accounts"

Lost Ark, like any MMO new or old, has had a bit of a bot problem since its launch. Whether the issue pertained to bots doing things that players wouldn't normally be able to do or bots grinding away at different tasks for those accounts only to be sold later, Lost Ark players have been complaining about bots in the forums for a while now. Lost Ark developer Smilegate RPG has spoken about the topic already and said it was working on the issue, and this week the Lost Ark team said that they'd banned over a million accounts deemed to be illegitimate.

The latest on the anti-bot efforts was shared in a post on the game's forums with the Lost Ark team acknowledging the "growing issue" of bots in the game. After creating tools necessary to identify bots, the team has now taken action with a massive ban wave.

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," the post on the forums said. "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."

Though the majority of the accounts banned should've been bots given that the team was focusing on only that problem right now, there's always the chance that someone could've gotten caught in the crossfire by accident. Smilegate acknowledged that possibility and said that if you've been banned accidently, reach out to have your account reinstated.

The team also added that it's going to keep working on the issue and that anti-bot and anti-cheat tools will continue to be worked on.

"Maintaining a fair and fun gameplay experience for our players is a top priority for the team," the Lost Ark team said. "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."