Shortly after its release in the West in February 2022, the Korean MMO Lost Ark had problems with gold-earning bots. A month after its release, Amazon Games banned "over a million" accounts using bots and promised to ban more regularly. It also made changes to the in-game economy as part of its plan to address one of the biggest problems with the Lost Ark.

Almost a year later, the problem persists: the January wave of bans was significant, with Amazon Games posting on its official forums (opens in new tab) that "many players have noticed a decrease in the number of concurrent users shown in Lost Ark's Steam statistics" . This change is a direct result of the deployment of a significant number of bot account bans, utilizing a new and very effective tactic to target bots and remove them from the game.

These "new and very effective tactics" appear to have caught a number of players who simply had not logged in for a while, resulting in a game ban that appears on their Steam profile.

Players caught in this wave are not VAC banned, but game banned, because VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) is, according to Valve's description (opens in new tab), "an automatic system". Game bans allow developers to decide who to ban, and bans are visible to anyone who looks at a user's profile; as Valve states on its Steam support page (opens in new tab), "Playing games with cheaters can be frustrating." You will know when such users have been removed from the matchmaking system. This is a public disgrace and makes people in other multiplayer games think you are a cheater.

Unsurprisingly, those falsely banned are not happy about such a blemish on their public Steam accounts; Lost Ark's overall user rating on Steam (open in new tab) is "Mostly Positive" but former players The most recent review has been lowered to "Mostly Negative" due to protests from former players. I haven't opened the game since February and was banned for no reason. Thank you for tarnishing my steam profile." There is no way DEV can ban you for not playing their game!!!!" A third person shouted.

In a forum post (opens in new tab), Amazon Games acknowledged that it has received "an increasing number of ban requests from players who have been wrongly affected by these bans." The studio continued, "We have identified the errors that triggered these erroneous BANs and are actively working on reversals for all affected legitimate players, with or without the submission of a support ticket. In the meantime, you can still submit a Ban Appeal ticket to Customer Support (opens in new tab) and the team will be able to recover your account more quickly and remove all penalties."

I have contacted Amazon Games and am seeking more information on how this occurred.