More than one million "illegitimate" Lost Ark accounts have been banned by Smilegate RPG and Amazon Games for using bots. The ban wave is taking place today (March 4) as a result of the developers developing tools to detect and remove bots from the game. Following its general release on February 11, the MMO reached a peak concurrent player count of 1,324,761, putting it second only to PUBG on the all-time Steam concurrents leaderboard. Those were most likely genuine players who wanted to check out the free-to-play action RPG, which had been popular in Korea for a few years before Amazon launched servers in Europe and the Americas. However, with over a million accounts being erased, we may witness a drop in concurrents compared to the current average of 683,509, according to Steam Charts.

Botting is a widespread MMO practice that involves using software to automate repetitive tasks, such as grinding starting zone opponents to level characters, with the goal of making a profit. Another game that has been affected by botting is New World, however the last time we heard of a ban wave in that $40 game, the number was 7,700.

While this is all excellent news, the developers of Raiders of the Lost Ark have issued a warning against "being shot by a stray bullet." This is due to the possibility that genuine, sincere Lost Ark players will be incorrectly classified as bots and hence blacklisted. "It's possible that a tiny number of players will be mistakenly labeled as bots in this large ban wave," they say. To avoid this, it's possible that edge circumstances will arise. If this happens, the developers have also included a website to challenge the ban. Since the MMORPG's introduction last month, botting has become a significant concern for Smilegate RPG and Amazon Games. Following the release, chats quickly filled up with gold spam, though we've since witnessed bots hoard resources by farming various regions.

The bot ban wave for the Raiders of the Lost Ark should have been activated by now, if not within the next few hours. Perhaps this will help to minimize the amount of clutter in World chat, and there will be no more "players" flying over the world one-shotting every field boss.