Inactive Lost Ark players who were banned for "cheating" will have their accounts restored. This announcement comes as Lost Ark devs say the bans were caused by a bug that they are "actively working on reversing", meaning they have no intention of booting fans who haven't played the game in a while.
Lost Ark players were furious to find that their accounts had been permanently banned this weekend, as they were caught up in a bot ban wave that had already removed a staggering two-thirds of players. The developers are now working on making sure that all legitimate players have their accounts restored, although it is still recommended that you submit a ban appeal to make the task easier for them.
"Following a recent wave of bot bans, we’ve seen an increase in ban appeals from players who have been incorrectly impacted by these bans," reads a short blog post on the official Lost Ark forums. "We have determined the error that triggered these false bans, and are actively working on reversing them for all affected legitimate players regardless of whether a support ticket who has been filed."
Anyone who wants their account back faster is asked to submit a ban appeal, as this will seemingly put you ahead of the backlog.
For whatever reason, the system the devs had rolled out to boot bots was also targeting inactive players, seemingly flagging their accounts as suspicious. The pushback was swift, with the affected players taking to Steam to voice their frustrations, managing to bring down the recent reviews to "most negative". 4000 of these reviews were made, almost all of which mention their accounts being banned for inactivity.
It's easy to see why so many were concerned. Regardless of previous playtime, it seems that they were told the bans would be permanent. We now know that won't be the case, however, and it should only be a matter of time before these incorrect bans are reversed.