KEY POINTS

  • Amazon's cheat detector has been flagging innocent players for alleged use of hacks
  • Many flagged accounts have since been unsuspended
  • Millions of bots were banned from the game earlier this month

After implementing a gigantic ban wave in “Lost Ark,” Amazon Games Studio has found itself in hot water with its community after several players were allegedly banned for no reason.

A post in the “Lost Ark” forum asked the developer for help as the number of unfairly-banned users grew. According to community manager Roxx, they are currently working with the game’s customer support team to address the issue, and they asked affected users to send appeal tickets to correct potential unreasonable bans.

However, many users in the thread said that ban appeals lead to nowhere as they kept receiving copy-pasted messages from the support team.

Other players reported that the bans seem to target those who have over 500 hours logged into “Lost Ark.” In a separate forum post, many players said that they were banned for three days for simply going AFK, while others claimed that they were banned for alleged cheating.

Lost Ark - The Warrior class specializes in brutal melee combat with heavy weapons
The Warrior class specializes in brutal melee combat with heavy weapons Lost Ark

Roxx said in both forum posts that a number of accounts were caught by their speed hack detection programs, and this has unfortunately resulted in some accounts being detected as false positives. Accounts that suffered from lag and connection issues were perceived as cheaters by the detection software, which resulted in unjust bans.

Additionally, Roxx said that any accounts that were affected during that time have since been unsuspended, and they will have no strikes placed on them.

AGS resorted to banning players after “Lost Ark” was flooded with bots armed with cheats that could grind through the game at staggering rates. On March 4, millions of bot accounts were banned, but this was apparently not enough to completely resolve the issue, according to PC Gamer’s report.

The bots not only break the in-game economy, but they also clog up “Lost Ark’s” loaded servers, preventing legitimate players from logging in. The game still has long queues in some servers, particularly the ones in Europe.

So far, “Lost Ark” still enjoys a healthy player population that averages around 400,000 per week, according to Steam Charts. This number is expected to fluctuate after Amazon resolves the bot problem and unbans the rest of the legitimate players.

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