Amazon acknowledges Lost Ark bot "frustration", despite "several million" bot account bans

Lost Ark still has a bot problem, publisher Amazon Games has admitted.

In a blog post acknowledging the continued issue and the ongoing "frustration within the community" it said it had felt too, Amazon announced it had permanently banned "several million accounts that participated in botting, hacking or gold-selling".

"Since Lost Ark launched, we've been fighting a war against the bots infiltrating Arkesia," Amazon dramatically wrote. "Addressing bots can be especially challenging in free-to-play games because it's so easy to create an account and enter the game, but we're working on multiple fronts to fight them."

As well as issuing bans, Amazon says it has worked to minimise the impact from bot accounts it has yet to hammer.

Steps taken to combat the problem include changes to quest and event rewards to deter bots farming gold, plus the addition of both Easy Anti Cheat and the game's own native detection and reporting systems to improve response times for bad actors.

Amazon has also level-gated chat to stop brand new accounts spamming adverts, and updated the game's automatic chat moderation with the latest gold seller buzzwords.

Some fans have called for a Captcha system or mandated two-factor authentication on sign-in, though Amazon has said these are not on the cards.

"These tools would require sizeable platform and architectural changes to implement in Lost Ark," Amazon wrote. "Real-world account owner identification is another method used in some regions, but the global scale of the Western version of the game and varying laws in the territories where we operate Lost Ark make this a less realistic solution for us.

"We appreciate your patience as we continue working to bring the best possible Lost Ark experience to our players."

Last month, Amazon outlined its Lost Ark content plan for April and May, including two new playable classes.