Smilegate’s Lost Ark had a lot planned in their roadmap for 2023, but something tells me that accidentally banning multiple accounts wasn’t on the list. Following a large wave of bot bans, @lostinarkesia reported that Lost Ark’s player base plummeted from 323,725 players to 101,550 in just one day. That is a little over 200k accounts erased from existence, and if these accounts were only bot accounts, there would be no issue–however, it would seem many player accounts have been lost in the wipe as well.
Following these bans Lost Ark’s Steam rating soon took a heavy blow as irate players flooded Steam with negative reviews resulting in only 28% of the 4,562 user reviews in the last 30 days being positive. “I don’t remember to see such ‘scummery’ in gaming where I am being punished for being busy with my life aka being off the game for a while, this is an entirely new level of predatory behavior, and I hope it doesn’t spread, low life scum policy right here, don’t support this trash company.” said one displeased user.
Lost Ark soon followed up with a statement that they were “actively working on reversing [the bans] for all affected legitimate players regardless of whether a support ticket has been filed,” later adding, “All bans related to this incident have been reversed, both for the Lost Ark game and Steam accounts, and will be removed without penalty shortly.” The statement then goes on to say that if any player’s account still has issues, they should reach out to Customer Support.
