Lost Ark bans ‘over a million’ bot accounts in ‘massive ban wave’

Lost Ark banned over a million accounts supposed to be bots, according to a forum post from yesterday. The batch of bans is only one part of the series of measures designed to combat “botting, cheating, and harmful behavior,” the post reads, and players can expect more measures in the future.

The “massive ban wave” took place on March 4, when the team permanently banned “over a million illegitimate accounts from the game that have been determined to be running bots.” The post also acknowledges the possibility of false positives and encourages erroneously banned players to appeal their bans through the official Amazon Game Studios support website.

Yesterday’s bans are only a part of Lost Ark‘s efforts to combat bots and cheaters, according to the blog post. Other upcoming measures include “expanding [its] anti-cheat tools, improving bot identification methods, and rolling out more ban waves as frequently as is necessary.”

Two days before the ban wave, a Top Issues post on the Lost Ark forums specifically mentioned gold seller spams and bots. “Spammers last an average of less than 10 minutes in-game before getting banned,” according to the post, but the team also pointed out the need for more actions. The March 2 post mentions improvements to anti-cheat and anti-spam tools, as well as restricting area chat for characters below level 30 to stop spammers from instantly spamming on new accounts.

Bots and gold sellers have been a part of Lost Ark since early into its Western release on Feb. 11. On Feb. 20, a little over a week after its full launch, gold sellers already appeared as a problem in a Top Issues post.