The Real Reason 1 Million Lost Ark Accounts Have Been Banned

"Lost Ark," the action MMORPG from Smilegate and Amazon has exploded since launching in the West. The ARPG was previously only available in Korea, but now western audiences can enjoy a modified version of the game. The game has seen tons of success, with its peak concurrent players on Steam hitting over 1.3 million players and maintaining over 700,000. With "Lost Ark" being a free-to-play MMO and being incredibly popular, people with bot accounts trying to sell gold and other items within the game have quickly become an issue, but Amazon and Smilegate have taken action.

Amazon announced in a blog post that it will be banning over a million accounts that it has deemed illegitimate because they are running bots. Amazon made it clear that this is not the last time it would be banning bot accounts in mass, although this might perhaps be the largest ban. With a ban of this size, Amazon has said that any accounts that were wrongly marked as using bots can file a ticket with support to get their account back. That's not the only action Amazon and Smilegate are taking to improve "Lost Ark," though

Amazon has made other modifications to the game to lessen the amount of spam players have to deal with from bots. The company added a level requirement for using chat in certain areas. Amazon also said in its blog post that it would continue its work to stop and remove bots from the game. "We will continue our work on detecting and removing botting, cheating, and harmful behavior from Lost Ark at scale, which includes expanding our anti-cheat tools, improving bot identification methods, and rolling out more ban waves as frequently as is necessary," the blog read.

While dealing with bots is likely frustrating for "Lost Ark" developers, it does bode well for the life of the MMO. While more "Diablo"-like in its gameplay, "Lost Ark" does share social features like other MMOs. This also means there will be people looking to buy leveled-up accounts and in-game currency in order to speed through the game. Of course, not everything is looking up for "Lost Ark." The game has come under fire for its design of female characters, who constantly only receive skimpy armor and have some ridiculous walking animations. The game also limits certain classes to certain genders, making some of these decisions look even more out of touch.