Lost Ark Loses 50% of Its Player Count Following Controversial Ban Wave
What happens when bot accounts are a big problem.
You may have read about Lost Ark’s recent false ban blunder where thousands of players with low play time or inactive accounts were mistakenly banned. Players took to social media and the game’s Steam reviews to voice their displeasure. Though it took the devs a few days to respond, they did eventually acknowledge the issue and roll back the ban wave. Unfortunately for Lost Ark itself, the damage has been done.
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For most of January, Lost Ark was averaging around 300,000 peak users each day. When Smilegate rolled out the bans, however, the player base plunged by nearly half down to about 150,000.
There’s no way to know how many accounts were falsely banned, but it’s doubtful to have been most of those. It’s also possible that players decided to stay away given the controversy. The most likely situation, however, is that a large minority of Lost Ark players were bots.
It’s honestly a wild thing to see play out. Lost Ark is by far the largest Steam based MMO. We don’t really get to see this kind of data from FFXIV which has its own launcher and World of Warcraft which runs through the Blizzard launcher.
Personally, I appreciate the extra insight, there aren’t too many schmucks like me who run FFXIV through Steam, so trends are limited to just 30-40k people per day.
Five New Games 🆕
Persona 3 Portable (#14)
It’s time for more Persona on PC! More-sona, if you will.
As someone who has only played Persona 5 Royal, one day I’ll get around to playing some of the previous installments.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – The Definitive Edition (#26)
A bit of a weird situation here where Steam shows San Andreas as one of the best sellers when it isn’t available for individual purchase. The bundle which also includes Vice City and GTA 3 is currently on sale for 50% off.
Rain World: Downpour (#45)
After almost six years, Rain World gets its first downloadable content in the form of an expansion that includes ten new regions, five new slugcats, local co-op, and an expedition mode where you’re randomly dropped into the world.
Surviving the Abyss (#47)
Looking for another early access city-building survival game? Surviving the abyss is set at the bottom of the ocean where horrors await in the dark and the experiments, you’re running on the local fauna surely aren’t helping.
Fraymakers (#81)
I’m not a fighting game expert, but Fraymakers has rollback netcode and a roster that includes Octodad, the Newgrounds tank dude, Among Us, and some others I was surpried to see.
The Movers 🆙
With the few weeks I took off, I hadn’t realized how far down the list PUBG had fallen. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t down there very long.
+84 PUBG: Battlegrounds
+71 Mahjong Soul
+61 Rain World
+60 KENA: Bridge of Spirits
+59 Horizon Zero Dawn
In Danger ⚡
New World is really hanging on by the skin of its teeth.
New World (#100) - 21 Weeks
Grounded (#85) - 18 Weeks
American Truck Simulator (#79) - 11 Weeks
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (#69) - 64 Weeks
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (#67) - 15 Weeks
Longest Lasting ⌛
No changes down here, but it’s a good time to remind folks that Elder Scrolls Online announcements are actually relevant. It may not get the same fanfare as World of Warcraft or FFXIV, but it keeps chugging along.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (546 Weeks)
Warframe (513 Weeks)
Grand Theft Auto V (419 Weeks)
The Elder Scrolls Online (418 Weeks)
Rust (396 Weeks)
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (375 Weeks)
Final Fantasy XIV Online (321 Weeks)
Dead by Daylight (298 Weeks)
War Thunder (291 Weeks)
Destiny 2 (185 Weeks)