Lost Ark players with inactive accounts caught by wave of bot bans
Bans show on your public Steam profile, and people aren’t happy about that.
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Since shortly after its western release in February of 2022, Korean MMOLost Arkhas had a problem with gold-farming bots. A month after release Amazon Gamesbanned “over a million” accounts for using bots, and committed to regularly banning more. It also made changes to the in-game economy as part of itsplan to deal with one of Lost Ark’s top issues.
Almost a year later, it’s still an issue. January’s ban wave was a significant one, with Amazon Gamesposting on the official forumthat, “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 utilized new and highly-effective tactics to target and remove bots from the game.”
Those “new and highly-effective tactics” have apparently also caught up a large number of players who simply hadn’t logged in for a while, resulting in a game ban that appears on their Steam profile.
That’s because players caught up in this wave are receiving game bans rather than VAC bans. The difference is that VAC, or Valve Anti-Cheat, is “an automated system designed to detect cheats installed on users' computers” asValve explains. Game bans let developers decide who to ban, and those bans are visible to anyone who looks at a user’s profile. As Valve says in theSteam support page, “It can be frustrating to play a game with a cheater, and it helps to know when such a user is removed from the matchmaking system.” It’s a public shaming, one that will make people in other multiplayer games consider you a cheat.
Unsurprisingly, those falsely banned are not happy about this blemish on their public Steam accounts. Lost Ark’s overalluser rating on Steamis Mostly Positive, but the recent reviews tell a different story, dropping to Mostly Negative as former players protest. “[H]ave not opened the game since February, got banned for no reason”, says one. “Thanks for tainting my steam profile :)”, another says. ““HOW IN THE EVER LOVIN' HELL CAN A DEV BAN YOU FOR NOT PLAYING THEIR GAME???!!!” shouts a third.
Amazon Games responded with apost on the forum, admitting that, “we’ve seen an increase in ban appeals from players who have been incorrectly impacted by these bans.” The studio goes on to say, “We have determined the error that triggered these false bans, and are actively working on reversing them for all affected legitimate players regardless of whether a support ticket who has been filed. In the meantime, you are still welcome tosubmit a Ban Appeal ticket to Customer Supportso that the team can more quickly assist with restoring your account and removing all penalties.”
I’ve reached out to Amazon Games for more information on how exactly this happened, and will update this story if I receive a reply.
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Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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