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Lost Ark Steam ban wave hits inactive players with cheating claims

Draugoth

Gold Member
lost-ark-steam-ban-wave-amazon-games-smilegate-580x334.jpg



A Lost Ark Steam ban wave to clamp down on bots has seemingly led to casual or former players of the free game receiving account bans for supposed cheating

A Lost Ark Steam ban wave aimed at clamping down on bot accounts has seemingly hit a large number of Steam users with erroneous bans. If you’ve just found out you’ve been banned from Lost Ark despite not playing in a while, you’re not alone – many users of the Valve storefront are reporting a ban in Amazon’s free game on Steam despite barely playing it or not booting it up in months. This follows a bot ban wave that cut the Lost Ark player count to one-third of its previous number.

In most cases, it appears that the majority of accounts affected are ones that haven’t played the game recently, or have relatively low playtime. The players might not have noticed, had it not been for a notification from Steam that they had received a ban. While this might not seem like a big problem if the player in question wasn’t planning to return to Lost Ark, permanent bans do leave a mark on your Steam account record.

Following this, the Lost Ark Steam reviews have plummeted to 52% positive in the last 30 days, with a huge spike of negative reviews landing on January 14, when players seem to have been hit with the ban. The Lost Ark Reddit, meanwhile, has had to resort to a pinned post from the moderators due to an overwhelming flood of posts from inactive players asking why they had been suddenly banned seemingly out of nowhere.

As a fairly casual Lost Ark player myself who hasn’t logged in for a few months but still keeps it installed in case the itch strikes me, my curiosity was naturally piqued. I boot the game up and, lo and behold, a message awaits me: “Your account has been permanently banned. If you believe you received this penalty in error, you may appeal. Reason: Cheating.” Obviously, take my word for what you feel it’s worth, but I’ve certainly not ever used any form of bot or cheat while playing.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Horrible fucking company, both Smilegate AND Amazon. Shit game with shit systems sponsored by an even shittier Amazshit.

vSvehy2.png
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
I'm thinking maybe Valve should get involved in this and help them reverse their fuck up
 

Mithos

Member
Haven't touched that crap in months, wonder if I'm banned too?
I've not played for a long time too. Long before the latest server mergers. Haven't even logged in to choose a new home server yet (because I want to pick the same server as my friends that also used to play a while a ago).

Maybe I should check if I'm on the banned "list" too or "still".
 

reinking

Gold Member
I just checked my account. Not Steam account banned but self-banned at this point since I will ever play it again.
 
Last edited:

Holammer

Member
Greetings Heroes of Arkesia,

Following a recent wave of bot bans, we saw an increase in ban appeals from players who were been incorrectly impacted by these bans.

We determined the error that triggered these false bans, and have reversed for all affected players regardless of whether a support ticket has been filed. This means any game bans or marks on your Steam account have been removed, or will be removed without penalty shortly.

If for any reason you have persisting issues, please reach out to [Customer Support](https://www.amazongames.com/en-us/support/lost-ark/contact-us). Thank you!

Thank you for your reports and patience as we worked to make this right with affected players.

I would have been livid if my Steam account got in poor standing because of a bug, but it seems to be fixed.
Tried Lost Ark for 4 hours, it made the cardinal sin of heaping too many names and world building pies at the player from the get-go.
 
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