Lost Ark, the free-to-play MMO, lost nearly 200,000 players following a bot ban wave earlier in the week, and it seems like the wave of bans affected legitimate players too.
Following the ban wave that was supposed to only affect bots, players took to Steam to leave negative reviews after they found themselves victims of false bans on Lost Ark for what seemed like no apparent reason.
Some Lost Ark players found that it was due to them being simply inactive.
Steam’s overall score for the game went from “mostly positive” to “mostly negative,” which is a clear sign of alarm. Almost all of the newly made negative reviews have been regarding the false bans.
One Steam review wrote: “I have been banned from the game because I have a busy life, and I don’t deserve to play the game for my lack of time to enjoy it. I don’t remember to see such ‘scummery’ in gaming where I am being punished for being busy with my life aka being off the game for a while, this is an entirely new level of predatory behavior, and I hope it doesn’t spread.”
Developer Smilegate released a short statement, saying: “Following a recent wave of bot bans, we’ve seen an increase in ban appeals from players who have been incorrectly impacted by these bans.
“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 has been filed. In the meantime, you are still welcome to submit a Ban Appeal ticket to Customer Service so that the team can more quickly assist with restoring your account and removing all penalties.
“Thank you for your reports and patience as we work to make this right with affected players.”
Lost Ark is one of the biggest games to release on Steam. Within 24 hours of its release, it saw so many players that it is now the holder of the second-highest concurrent peak on Steam ever.
Lost Ark was published by Amazon Game Studios, which also published another MMO called New World.
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
