Lost Ark Bans Over A Million Bot Accounts

screenrant.com:

A massive ban wave for Lost Ark removed over a million bot accounts from the game, as the developers work to bolster its anti-cheat and bot identification methods. Amazon Games’ Lost Ark launched in the west in early February and quickly garnered impressive numbers. In its opening weekend, Lost Ark broke Steam records, beating out both Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota. The game hit a peak of 1.324 million players, despite a laundry list of issues during its launch. While Lost Ark’s developers continue to iron out server-side bugs, there are other issues plaguing the MMO.

Bot accounts are a major problem for Lost Ark, especially since queue times are already frustrating the MMO’s massive player base. After the game’s Western launch earlier this year, Lost Ark suffered from review-bombing on Steam and other review outlets, with players flooding feeds with negative scores and grievances. Despite boasting millions of players within weeks of its North American launch – and an overall positive consensus from critics – the game’s overwhelmingly positive rating dropped to mixed on Steam, with many players frustrated with Lost Ark’s long queue times disrupting gameplay. One reason for the long queue times is the game’s overloaded servers, as bot accounts continue to take spots from real-life players.

Related: Lost Ark Update Introduces New Story Content & Endgame Abyss Raids

According to its blog (via IGN), Lost Ark banned over a million bots, permanently removing the illegitimate accounts. The “massive ban wave” was the first step in resolving Lost Ark’s “growing” bot issue, but the team will continue its work to identify and remove additional accounts “determined to be running bots.” The developers did point out that