Lost Ark is still fighting bots and illegitimate accounts

Smilegate is still battling bots in its newly launched MMO, Lost Ark, published by Amazon Games.

In a blog post shared yesterday, the development team provided an update on the game's plentiful bots, saying it was "working on internal methods and tools to make it much more difficult for bots to enter the game".

It follows an announcement last week that said Smilegate had "been hard at work on crafting effective tools and methods to identify and remove bots from the game" and banned over a million "bot" accounts from its servers on March 4.

"Last Friday we began rolling out bot bans, targeting over a million illegitimate accounts," the update said (thanks, NME). "We know this will not fix the situation by itself and there are still bots present in the game, so we want to provide reassurance that this was just one step in an ongoing battle.

"Following this initial massive ban wave, we are continuing to regularly roll out additional bans to clear out more bots from the game. Beyond that, we are also working on internal methods and tools to make it much more difficult for bots to enter the game, especially at the current rate they are being created. These updates will soon be on their way to the game.

"We've also heard player concerns about the effect these bots may have on the in-game economy when it comes to gold buying and selling, and we are closely monitoring this situation," the post explained. "We have changed the gold reward to silver for some Rapport and Guide Quest rewards in order to prevent the abuse of these systems by botters and gold farmers."

So what is Smilegate going to do about that in-game economy?

"Please also remember that participating in any real-money transactions (RMT) through third-party sellers is against our terms of service and will result in an account ban, for both the buyer and seller," the developer added. "To help safeguard your account, be [wary] of gold and gifts sent to you by users that you don’t know, and always reject any items that show up in your mailbox that you feel uncertain about."

New to Lost Ark? "If Lost Ark stayed under your radar until its near-instant climb up the Steam charts, allow us to fill you in," Ali explains in his article, What is Lost Ark and Why Is It Blowing up on Steam?. 

"If this is the first you're hearing of Lost Ark, then you also need to know that it isn't a 'traditional' MMO by any stretch of the imagination."

Lost Ark may not have been out long, but it's already one of the biggest games to ever hit Steam. Within 24 hours of release, it clocked up so many players that it now boasts the second-highest concurrent peak ever, topping games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Amazon's own New World, which currently has a peak of 913K. The only game to have ever had more concurrent record players is PlayerUnknown's PUBG.

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