Lost Ark Just Removed An Unbelievable Number Of Fake Accounts
Lost Ark developers just made a major sweep and took out an almost unimaginable number of fake bot accounts that were slowing things down
This article is more than 2 years old
Let’s face it: gaming cheats can be incredibly fun — in single-player games, where people play against an AI. However, when it comes to multiplayer games, either battle royals, team deathmatches, or MMORPGs, running cheats is more than unfair. It’s unethical by any gaming standard, prompting the unwritten rule of gaming stating that you either got skills or cheats. That still doesn’t stop gamers from gaining unfair advantages over their peers; however, the development team behind Amazon’s Lost Ark, the new and hot MMORPG, decided to do a sweep — banning over one million accounts that ran bot scripts.
As reported by IGN, the team behind Lost Ark announced that they permanently removed over a million illegitimate accounts from the game that were running bots. Botting has been a huge problem since Lost Ark launched, and the team credited with making this beautiful game has been hard at work on identifying and removing bots from the game, creating a fair and fun gameplay experience. Admittedly, this massive ban should positively impact the in-game environment and gaming culture. Still, there’s more work to be done, and the company announced that this ban wave is just one of many in an ongoing process of fighting against unfair gamers.
Dev teams acknowledged that one million is a large number and that some players might’ve been erroneously identified as bots and removed from the game. Lost Ark team advises honest players that have been affected by the purge to appeal to the ban by submitting a ticket on Lost Ark’s support site. This news follows last month’s report of incredibly long queues and stability issues caused by massive server congestions — some of which were off-loaded by introducing new in-game realms. Rather strange for a game that had just been released in North America and Europe to have such a massive number of players across all realms.
Well, Lost Ark isn’t a game without history, considering that it was originally released in 2019 for the South Korean market. Unfortunately, many Asian MMOs are plagued by gold-farming bots — scripts controlling the in-game character that goes through low-level content farming in-game currencies. For example, 2005’s Silkroad Online video game, another South Korean MMORPG, is notoriously known for server congestions caused by gold-farming bots — in fact, it’s suspected that the majority of its in-game population, across all in-game realms, are bots. So, what’s the purpose of running a script instead of enjoying the game yourself?
The answer is quite simple: gold-farming is very profitable. Gold-farming bots are used for farming in-game currency in massive quantities, which are then sold to actual players for real-life currency. Most games have strict non-botting policies clearly stated in their TOS (terms of service), but the enforcement of said policies largely depends on the company. Like the developer and published or Silkroad Online, some companies turn a blind eye, while others, like the team behind Lost Ark, ban gold-farmers immediately. Activision Blizzard pushed gold-farmers out of the market by implementing gold tokens in World of Warcraft, which allowed players to buy in-game gold from Blizzard directly — gaining unfair advantages without any repercussions.
In retrospect, it’s quite possible that the last month’s server congestions Lost Ark suffered from were nothing more than gold-farming bots trying to stock up on goods and seize the fresh market. It sounds ridiculous, farming in-game gold for real money. However, considering that Lost Ark just banned over million accounts, the supply clearly exists, indicating very strong demand. Profits — why else would anyone go out of their way to cheat in a video game?
