Amazon Games dropped a developer blog post Friday to address the ongoing bot issue in Lost Ark.
On March 4, over a million illegitimate accounts determined to be running bots were permanently banned â a move that was intended to make a "massive impact." Despite this, and a number of other changes Amazon Games have made over the past few months (e.g. level-gated area chats, changing the reward structures of quests and events, blocking VPNs) it's clear that botting remains a glaring issue in the ever-popular MMOARPG.
"Since Lost Ark launched," Amazon Games' May 13 blog post reads, "weâve been fighting a war against the bots infiltrating Arkesia. Addressing bots can be especially challenging in free-to-play games because itâs so easy to create an account and enter the game, but weâre working on multiple fronts to fight them.
"We canât share all the details, because we donât want to help bot users more easily adapt to our tactics, but weâre working closely with Easy Anti Cheat to improve their support of Lost Ark and with Smilegate RPG to improve the native bot detection system, while tuning events and rewards to prevent or remove paths for bot abuse. Weâre also exploring new ways to help combat bots natively at scale."
Amazon Games also acknowledged suggestions from the community to add tools like Captcha or two-factor authentication, but explained that implementing them would "require sizeable platform and architectural changes."
Lost Ark is a prime target of botting, hacking or gold selling for many reasons.
Being a game that's free-to-play and has real money trade (RMT) elements, making accounts and giving them value in Lost Ark is easy.
With Lost Ark continuing to have a massive player base, there are plenty of potential buyers and exploiters in the environment that botting introduces.
Lost Ark remains incredibly grindy, meaning there are endless things to sell off, including entire accounts.
"As we continue our quest to rid Arkesia of bots, we are also conscious of possible pain points some of these measures might cause for our players, and are working to balance this. We appreciate your patience as we continue working to bring the best possible Lost Ark experience to our players."