Lost Ark has permanently banned dormant users, including those with hundreds of hours of playing as well as those who paid top dollar on the title. This decision has left many gamers perplexed and unhappy. As a result, Lost Ark has been receiving a lot of negative feedback on Steam as people get banned in increasing numbers.
It’s no surprise that Lost Ark has a serious bot issue and that the creators have been working hard to address it by tightening up security and limiting who may sign up for new accounts. Since it costs nothing to play, fraudsters and growers may easily enter free-to-play games and cause havoc for the financial system and player population. And with this new action, Lost Ark has seemingly gone to extremes to safeguard the game from cheaters.
Upon starting Steam this weekend, a number of players discovered they had been indefinitely blacklisted from Lost Ark, a title they hadn’t touched in almost a year. Curiously, this round of bans is directed at dormant gamers by way of Steam’s anti-cheat technology. This is intended to be utilized to detect cheats or rowdy gamers, and it puts a fairly ugly label on any Steam user’s account showing that they have been blacklisted from 1 or more titles. As a result of last year’s unprecedented success of the title Lost Ark, a large percentage of players who never intended to cheat were unfairly labeled as such.
Many Steam assessments mention the idleness penalty, although their accounts of why people were banned vary widely. Some prohibited users have accumulated as much as 40 hours of gaming time since the title’s February release. While others have played for less than 10 hours total, they have been permanently blacklisted for inactivity during the last six months. Still, others claim they were blocked despite purchasing the Lost Ark Founder’s Pack, which granted them early access for a period of days.
This may have irreparably damaged Lost Ark’s image since most games strive to re-engage dormant players instead of irreparably banning them. Many players would like not to be labeled as cheats in future games. Thus it’s no surprise that they’d rather check out another free MMORPG.
