In early February, Lost Ark celebrated its release on Steam. Since then, it has been an integral part of the top 5 Steam charts. In the last few weeks, the MMORPG has even gained player numbers again. However, there are things in the statistics that are concerning. Are many players possibly bots?
What is the current status of Lost Ark? The new MMORPG from Smilegate and Amazon is currently performing well on Steam. In the last 24 hours, it reached 591,542 concurrent players at its peak – enough for 3rd place in the charts, directly behind CS:GO and Dota 2.
However, the player numbers of Lost Ark have faced criticism for some weeks now. Many players claim that these numbers are inflated by bots, and the community may be significantly smaller overall. We at MeinMMO took a closer look.
Missing weak phases and rising numbers despite lower interest
What is striking about the numbers? Lost Ark essentially has no time during the day when few players are online. Looking at the numbers from the past week – and excluding the maintenance directly at the start of the graph – the highest player count is 628,000 and the lowest is 369,000.
Thus, Lost Ark is able to consistently maintain at least 58% of its player numbers. Furthermore, the graph is relatively stable and has generally low fluctuations – most of the time, significantly over 400,000 players are online at the same time.
Comparing this graph with other top games on Steam, there are clear differences. In CS:GO, for instance, the peak in the last week was at 902,000 players. The lowest regular count was at 317,000 players. That’s just 35% of the maximum player count.
Moreover, the fluctuations here are very strong and clearly tied to specific times. Every day, the same pattern occurs, and every day, the numbers drop significantly below 400,000, thus below the 50% mark.
Just as the graph looks for CS:GO, it also appears for other online games such as DOTA 2, Apex Legends, PUBG, and GTA 5 on Steam. They all have a low point when it is about 2:00 AM in our timezone.
Why does the graph of Lost Ark fluctuate less? An explanation for lower fluctuations could be better coverage across all time zones. However, that sounds rather unlikely for Lost Ark. The game has its own versions in Russia, Japan, and Korea that are not available on Steam. Here, one would expect more fluctuations instead.
A commonly held theory suggests that significantly more bots are active in Lost Ark, which continuously inflate the numbers since they are active 24 hours a day to farm. There is also further evidence supporting this theory.
Fluctuations like in bot games and the drop after bot bans
What else suggests bots? The fluctuations in the player numbers of Lost Ark roughly resemble MIR 4, an MMORPG driven mainly by bots:
On March 5, we also reported that there was a large banning wave. Over a million bots were reportedly banned from March 3 to March 4. And you can even see that in the player numbers:
- On March 3, there were a peak of 815,000 players online
- On March 4, only 759,000 – the first time the game fell below 800,000 players at peak
- On March 5, there were again 847,000 players – although one must keep in mind that there are generally more players active on weekends than during the week
Then came a second banning wave. From March 9 (805,000 players) to March 10 (679,000 players). Whether there were further banning waves was not communicated externally.
No increase in interest, but rising player numbers
In March, player numbers dropped significantly, down to 336,000 concurrent players on March 30. However, in recent weeks they have notably recovered and regularly break the 600,000 concurrent players mark.
Although there have been some new content updates in Lost Ark that players can now explore, the interest in the MMORPG has overall decreased according to Google Trends and is significantly lower than in March. Nevertheless, the player numbers have nearly doubled since then.
Good updates help, but the numbers are suspicious
Are all players in Lost Ark bots? No, absolutely not. Lost Ark is still very popular.
A strong share of returning players comes from events that have provided more loot and thus less grind, new classes like the Lancer released in April, and the upcoming Destroyer in May, as well as regular new raids and dungeons.
No wonder MeinMMO author Mark Sellner recently explained why now is an ideal time to return or start in Lost Ark.
However, anyone starting a new character will encounter many bots. They have now also penetrated the areas of higher gear scores. Complaints about bots frequently appear on reddit. Here’s a selection of threads from the last 7 days: reddit 1, reddit 2, reddit 3, reddit 4, reddit 5, reddit 6.
Even the German community manager Maselbart confirms in the official forum that bots are a problem in the West:
Smilegate and AGS are working closely together, and no one is undermining the other. Bots are a bigger problem in the West than in Korea, as there players must register their accounts with a phone number. This makes things a bit more complicated.
Blaming Smilegate for botting is completely unfounded and, in my opinion, unfair to the developers who put in so much effort.
SG and Amazon are constantly working on different, new methods to tackle this, but it’s not something that can be fixed overnight; it requires time.
How significant the proportion of bots is in the player numbers is hard to estimate. However, much suggests that bots constitute a considerable portion of the good numbers on Steam.
Especially on the American servers, there are strong complaints about bots. Right during their prime time, the usual drop seen in other online games is absent. Here, the game is sometimes 100,000 to 200,000 users stronger than it should be.
Have you come across bots recently? Or have your servers been spared?
Why the numbers of Lost Ark have fallen so drastically is explained by Twitch streamer shroud:
Twitch streamer explains why New World and Lost Ark have lost so many players on Steam
