In less than twelve hours, Lost Ark lost more than 200,000 concurrent players on Steam after a covert bot ban that was meant to help out real players hit the service. This comes as great news after players left and right have been complaining about the endless waves of bots that are flooding the servers, bringing down the game’s performance. These bots have also managed to ruin the economy, as they would grind and sell resources in the Market and Auction House. Even the starting area of the game would be full of “players” just starting the game that had a clear goal full of nefarious intent.
This problem is fairly common in free-to-play online games such as Lost Ark. That said, since the game is one of the most popular free games out on the market right now, the fans have higher expectations. Smilegate has made a statement on its forum regarding its secret move to eliminate the bot population from the game. The team said that “players should expect these bot bans to have a positive impact on gameplay, including improved Market and Auction House experiences, decreased lag in heavily populated areas, and fewer bots present in the game.”
These results are clear, as players can now see only around one hundred to two hundred pages on the Auction House, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands of pages that were there before. Smilegate has also promised that they will keep monitoring the servers and players, trying to keep the bots out of the game. They have further stated that “in the coming months, we will continue to deploy large-scale bot ban waves, implementing new methods of identifying and actioning against bots en masse.”
