In fact, it isn't even close to being a ban wave; rather, it is a ban tsunami to be more precise. The game deployed one of the largest ban waves we've ever seen in our lives, with over a million accounts being banned in a single day for botting, something we've never seen before. There has been a delay of less than a month since the game's initial release. Not surprisingly, there have been complaints about bots, which should not be surprising.
It reached an incredible 1,324,761 peak concurrent players after its widespread release on February 11, placing it second only to PUBG on Steam's all-time concurrents leaderboard, according to the game's developer. In all likelihood, the individuals in question were legitimate players who wanted to try out a free-to-play action RPG that had been popular in Korea for several years prior to Amazon launching servers in Europe and the Americas, cheap lost ark gold and which had previously been available only in Korea. It is possible that the number of concurrent users will decrease as a result of the deletion of over a million accounts when compared to the average concurrent users recorded thus far, which Steam Charts estimates to be around 683,509.
According to one player on Twitter, they have already noticed a decrease in the Lost Ark server queue from over 8,000 to 950, though it is unclear whether this is a direct result of the bans or an unintended consequence of the bans. It is common practice in MMOs to use software to automate repetitive behaviors (for example, grinding starter zone enemies to level characters) with the goal of making a profit from the characters involved. However, the last time we heard about a ban wave in that $40 game, the total number of players was only 7,700.
Botters find Lost Ark to be an especially appealing target because it is a free-to-play game, which means they do not have to worry about losing their investment if they are banned, which helps to explain the scale of the problem. Contrary to the fact that it is a free-to-play game, one report claims that Lost Ark Gold store has received more than 13 million cheater bans in less than a year, indicating widespread cheating. While it's likely that some of those operating bots will eventually give up their attempts to exploit the system if Amazon and Smilegate are truly that good at detecting them, Lost Ark is currently on track to match Amazon's monthly ban total of one million bans in the near future.
Our entire development team is focused on ensuring that our players have an enjoyable and fair gaming experience, according to a statement released by the developers today. We hope to have a significant impact with this ban wave, but we also recognize that there is still more work to be done in this area. We would like players to be aware that this is only the first step in what will be a long and involved process that will require their participation. When looking ahead, we will continue to put forth significant effort to detect and remove botting, cheating, and other forms of harmful behavior from The Raid: Redemption on a broad scale. We appreciate you taking the time to work with us. In order to deter cheating attempts, we will be upgrading our anti-cheat tools, improving bot identification methods, and deploying more ban waves as often as necessary.
A small number of players may be incorrectly identified as bots, according to the Lost Ark team, and the team has acknowledged that this could happen. A support ticket can be submitted to Amazon Games customer service by anyone who believes they have been unfairly targeted as part of the million-bot wave despite the fact that they are legitimate players.
