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Smilegate's newly launched MMO, Lost Ark – published by Amazon Games – has banned over a million "bot" accounts from its servers.
"Following launch, botting has been a growing issue for Lost Ark," the studio announced in a blog update. "Our team has been hard at work on crafting effective tools and methods to identify and remove bots from the game.
"As the result of this work, today (March 4) we will be permanently removing over a million illegitimate accounts from the game that have been determined to be running bots."
The post adds that as a consequence of the "massive ban wave", a "small number" of players may have been erroneously tagged as bots and banned. In those cases, players are urged to appeal their ban by submitting a support ticket.
"Maintaining a fair and fun gameplay experience for our players is a top priority for the team," the team concludes. "While we intend to make a massive impact with this ban wave, we know that there is more work to be done and want players to know that this is only one step in what will be an active and ongoing process.
"Looking ahead, 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."
It's hoped the bans will remove bot accounts from servers and make it easier - and quicker - for players to get online. Several players have responded on Twitter to say they've seen improvements since the bans took effect.
ICYMI, Lost Ark hasn't been out long, but it's already one of the biggest games to ever hit Steam. Within 24 hours of release, it clocked up so many players that it now boasts the second-highest concurrent peak ever, topping games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Amazon's own New World, which currently has a peak of 913K. The only game to have ever had more concurrent record players is PlayerUnknown's PUBG.
"If Lost Ark stayed under your radar until its near-instant climb up the Steam charts, allow us to fill you in," Ali explains in his article, What is Lost Ark and Why Is It Blowing up on Steam?.
"If this is the first you're hearing of Lost Ark, then you also need to know that it isn't a 'traditional' MMO by any stretch of the imagination."
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