by Developer Smilegate has released a new update on Lost Ark and the ongoing fight against the bots that plague the game. The studio acknowledged that while there is still a lot of work to be done, it has successfully purged the free-to-play MMORPG of several million bots. Accounts that had engaged in bots, hacking, or selling gold were discovered and banned, and other improvements include a closed-level chat area to prevent new accounts from spamming gold-selling ads.
Additionally, Smilegate updated in-game chat auto-moderation to catch lines and phrases commonly used by gold sellers, changed quest and event reward structures to add a stronger deterrent against using bots to collect gold, and blocked IPs from regions that have shown high amounts of bot activity.