Shortly after its February 2022 release in the West, the Korean MMO Lost Ark has had problems with its gold-collecting bots. A month after its release, Amazon Games banned “more than 1 million” accounts for using bots, promising to ban more on a regular basis. He’s also made changes to the in-game economy as part of his plans to address one of Lost Ark’s biggest problems.
Almost a year later it’s still an issue. The January ban wave was a significant one, Amazon Games posted on the official forums (opens in new tab) “Many players have noticed a decrease in the number of concurrent users appearing in their Lost Ark Steam stats. It’s a direct result of our rollout, targeting and removing bots from the game.”
These “new and highly effective tactics” seem to have caught a large number of players who hadn’t logged in for a while, leading to the banning of the game appearing on their Steam profile.
This is because players caught in this wave are receiving game bans instead of VAC bans. The difference is, as Valve describes it, VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) is “an automated system designed to detect cheats installed on users’ computers.” (opens in new tab)Game bans allow developers to decide who to ban. These bans are visible to anyone viewing the user’s profile. As Valve states on their Steam support page (opens in new tab)“Playing games with cheaters can be frustrating and it helps to know when such users are removed from the matchmaking system.” It’s what makes people in player games see you as a cheat.
Naturally, those who were wrongly banned aren’t happy with this blemish on their public Steam accounts. Overall Lost Ark User Rating on Steam (opens in new tab) Mostly positive, but recent reviews tell a different story, and previous players protested, making it mostly negative.”[H]I haven’t opened the game since February and I got banned for no reason”. ? ? ! ! ! ” shout three times.
Amazon Games responded with a forum post (opens in new tab)admits, “We have seen an increase in ban appeals from players who have been falsely affected by these bans.” and are actively working to reinstate them for all affected legitimate players, regardless of whether support tickets have been filed. You are welcome to submit a Ban Appeal ticket to Customer Support (opens in new tab) Help our team recover accounts and remove all penalties more quickly. “
I’ve reached out to Amazon Games for more information on how this happened, and I’ll update this story when I hear back.
