It’s no secret that Lost Ark has a major bot problem, and the developers have been going to great lengths to curtail the growing bot population with increased security and more restrictions on new accounts. As a free-to-play game, it’s all too easy for scammers and farmers to get into the game and disrupt the economy and player base with little risk on their own part. In what appears to be a draconian measure to somehow protect the game from bad actors, Lost Ark has gone even further with this latest move.

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Thousands of gamers launched Steam this weekend only to be notified that they’ve been permanently banned from Lost Ark, a game they probably haven’t played in close to a year. This ban wave is targeting inactive players, but bewilderingly, it’s using Steam’s anti-cheat system to do so. This leaves a rather nasty mark on any Steam user’s profile indicating that they’ve been banned from 1 or more games and is supposed to be used to identify cheaters or unruly players. Lost Ark’s record-setting launch last year means that a huge number of otherwise innocent gamers are being marked as cheaters for briefly trying out a much-hyped free-to-play game.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact criteria for the inactivity ban, as droves of Steam reviews reporting on the ban show a range of histories. Some players that have been banned have up to 40 hours of playtime, but not since the game launched last February. Others, meanwhile, have less than 10 hours of playtime but have been banned for not playing in the past six months or so. Others report being banned despite paying money for Lost Ark’s Founder’s Pack which gave players a few days of early access to the game.

It’s a strange move, considering most games are trying to win back their inactive players rather than permanently ban them, and it may have done irreparable damage to Lost Ark’s reputation moving forward. Understandably, many gamers would prefer to try other free-to-play MMORPGs that won’t mark them as cheaters later down the road.

Lost Ark is available on PC.

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Source: Steam