Lost Ark’s launch in February was widely considered to be a massive success, hitting over 1.3 million concurrent users for the MMO in its first two days of launch. However, in the month since its release, players all over social media and on the game’s official forums decried the rampant botting and cheating. Because of the game’s popularity, players have also dealt with long server lines since its release. But this wave of bans seems to have cut into waiting times considerably, with some players reporting that lines have shrunk by thousands of players during peak periods. The team also clarified that players who were “erroneously identified as bots” would be allowed to contact the team to overturn their ban. This is just the start of Lost Ark’s fight against cheating and bot use. “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,” the team stated. Because Lost Ark is currently Free to Play, it is generally more prone to duplicate accounts and exploitation than games locked behind a paywall. However, this current ban is an encouraging step in the right direction and may help maintain a stable player base.
