In the MMORPG Lost Ark, players recently tricked Amazon and managed to not only grab valuable items but also keep them after the ban. Now comes the next reaction from the developers.
How did the players obtain the items? In the MMORPG Lost Ark on Steam, there was an exploit that many players used to secure large amounts of money, valuable items, and upgrade materials. Amazon responded shortly after to the situation and banned players depending on how much they exploited it.
The bans for the first players have already been lifted. They were able to return to their characters and experienced a big surprise.
Here you can see a live-action trailer of Lost Ark:
Bans are over, items are still there
What happened to the items? It is unclear exactly how they did it, but some players still possessed items, materials, and other objects that they had obtained through their exploit even after their two-week ban.
The developers at Amazon overlooked something, which is now causing frustration in the community. On various platforms, some players are posting how their characters look after the ban, shocking the community.
What do the characters look like? One example is the user Stormcrow1172 on Reddit. He posts a screenshot there with a list:
- “482k Gold in weapon upgrades + 1,809 Chaos stones
- 666k Gold in armor upgrades + 2,220 Chaos stones
- 108k in T4 blues after conversion
- 15k in T4 reds after conversion
- 213k in T4 fusions after conversion
- 44k in T4 jumps after conversion
- ~1.5 million Gold total + 4,029 Chaos stones
- -9k Gold as a penalty”
The player has thus acquired items worth 1.5 million Gold, which were still present even after his ban. As a penalty, his Gold was set to -9,000, which he will probably quickly be able to recover.
This is probably just one example of many that is now prompting the developers to take action again and reach out to the player base.
Amazon is working on damage control
What is Amazon Games doing now? The developers of Amazon Games have reached out to the player base again and stated in their statement that there have likely been some “edge cases” where items or chests obtained through cheating remained in players’ accounts.
Therefore, they are now adjusting the ban duration for players and imposing “additional permanent bans”. The Gold of players is also expected to further decrease into the negative if these items have already been used or destroyed. You can find the full statement on X.com.
How is the community reacting to the events? The community is furious and can hardly believe that players with stolen items worth millions are simply allowed to continue playing after two weeks. Amazon Games’ statement has had little effect so far, and the mood is understandably poor.
On Reddit, tensions are high. The Reddit user grinine writes: “[…] I have never seen so many mistakes in a game. At this point, I feel sorry for those who play honestly and fairly. We could call this game Clown Ark from now on.”
Fit-Stick251 also feels cheated on Reddit: “This game/company does not deserve your dedication; they do not respect us, they do not even respect their own TOS [editor’s note: terms of service]. […] The best thing I did was leave LA the moment I started to become a clown.”
Regarding the statement from Amazon Games, joker_mafia comments on Reddit: “PR bullshit, just like the first time; let’s not forget that they haven’t done anything against those who duplicated unbound Gold and even talked about it.”
Players are angry and the overall sentiment is very poor. Many players are demanding permanent bans for all who used the exploit and a clear stance against the cheaters. However, Amazon Games seems to want to continue with their original approach of tiered bans: Through a trick, players in the MMORPG Lost Ark on Steam have become very wealthy, now Amazon is reacting
