Thousands banned from game for not playing

Thousands of players of a popular online game have been accidentally banned for being inactive as the game’s developer cracks down on bots.

Thousands of inactive Lost Ark players have been unintentionally banned for “cheating” despite not having played the game in months.

The massive ban wave came as developer Tripod Studio attempted to weed out cheaters and bots, which resulted in over 200,000 accounts being banned. Unfortunately, a large amount of legitimate players were also banned due to inactivity, the developer has confirmed.

“Following a recent wave of bot bans, we’ve seen an increase in ban appeals from players who have been incorrectly impacted by these bans,” Tripod said in a blog post on the game’s official website, “We have determined the error that triggered these false bans, and are actively working on reversing them for all affected legitimate players regardless of whether a support ticket has been filed”.

According to TheGamer, over 4000 negative reviews on the game’s Steam store page mentioned the false bans, and it’s expected that even more players were banned that didn’t leave reviews.

Lost Ark originally released in Korea four years ago, but has since been brought to the West by Amazon. Picture: Amazon Games

Tripod says that while it should be able to identify falsely banned accounts, players can speed the process along by submitting a ban appeal request with its customer support. It also says that the majority of accounts affected have been unbanned, but that some may still remain and that affected players should reach out to customer support.

Lost Ark is a massively multiplayer online RPG that was initially released in 2019 in South Korea. Amazon Games brought the MMO to Europe and North America in early 2022, where it was well-received by fans and critics alike.

Lost Ark lets players team up with friends and strangers to explore and fight in the game world. Picture: Amazon Games

It’s not the only time players have been banned for doing nothing wrong. Thousands of Call of Duty players said they were falsely banned in November following the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.

The players say they received emails from Activision, the game’s publisher, stating that they were banned for “using unauthorised software and manipulation of game data”, despite many players saying they’ve never done anything of the sort.

Controversial streamer Dr Disrespect was legitimately banned from Call of Duty Warzone 2.0, after he “spammed” the game’s voice chat feature. The streamer called the ban “insane”, and said that it showed Activision was “out of touch”.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.