Amazon’s Diablo-like RPG, Lost Ark, was played by over 1.3 million people at launch. It’s cooled since then, but there are still tens of thousands of people who log in each week to enjoy it. Or they would if they hadn’t been banned for no reason.
Amazon last week decided to clean up some order and unleash a wave of bans allegedly targeting bot accounts. But a lot of real people were affected by the bans too, and what made matters worse is that for Steam players who were also considered banned from their Steam accounts, which is a serious blot on their overall record.
Amazon was quickly notified of this and over the weekend was “actively working to roll it back for all affected players, regardless of whether a support ticket was filed.” Especially for Steam gamers who are sweating the consequences of having their account banned, Amazon says that lifting not only “unlocks your game ban” but also “all marks on your Steam account.”
The company issued this statement over the weekend:
Greetings Heroes of Arkesia,
After a recent spate of bot bans, we’ve seen an increase in ban requests from players who were mistakenly affected by these bans.
We’ve identified the bug that caused these false bans and are actively working to resolve them for all affected players, regardless of whether a support ticket was submitted. This will remove your ban and all flags on your Steam account. We will notify players when this work is complete. In the meantime, you’re still welcome to submit a ban appeal ticket to customer service so the team can speedily assist in recovering your account and removing any penalties.
Thank you for your reports and your patience while we work to fix this for affected players.
And followed up yesterday with a statement that all bans should have been reversed now. The bans follow the developers’ efforts to fix certain areas of the game that have been swamped by bots, most notably the Market and Auction House.
