The Play2Earn game MIR4 (PC, iOS, Android) is the second largest MMORPG on Steam as of June 2022 – only Lost Ark is larger. However, the online role-playing game has set an absurd negative record: over 13 million accounts have been banned worldwide. That’s more than the population of many countries in the world.
How many people has MIR4 banned so far? According to Wemade’s new report, as of May 27, 2022, 13,004,185 accounts have been banned (via FB).
If the banned players of MIR4 were residents of a country, it would rank 75th among the most populous countries in the world, ahead of countries like Tunisia (11.8 million), Belgium (11.6 million), and Cuba (11.3 million), and far ahead of Austria (9 million) or Switzerland (8.7 million). All data comes from Worldometers.
How many players does MIR4 have on Steam? MIR4 currently has nearly 54,000 simultaneous players (via steamcharts.com), significantly more than MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XIV (14,750) or Black Desert (12,200).
However, it is far from the player counts of Lost Ark (605,000) – ironically, it is assumed that Lost Ark actually needs to ban many of its players, as the MMORPG from Smilegate also suffers from a significant bot problem.
MIR4: Many Botters vs. High Interest in Banning Botters
Why are so many people banned in MIR4? Two factors come together:
- It is “lucrative” to bot in MIR4, as you can effectively earn money in-game through farming and grinding . MIR4 is a ‘Pay2Earn’ game: things earned in-game can be sold directly. However, this MMORPG is not particularly fun, as indicated by the reviews of MIR4 on Steam.
- The developers have a strong interest in preventing this botting, as botting leads to oversupply. This lowers the value of the items that can be earned in-game. Therefore, only “real players” should be able to earn in MIR4, ideally, they also buy items or heroes in MIR, ensuring demand.
- When botting occurs, the financial value of each hour in-game decreases – and it is already low. Therefore, Wemade follows a “zero tolerance” policy in this MMORPG.
Play2Earn game MIR4 is especially popular in the Philippines
Who makes money with such things? In so-called Play2Earn games, players from countries with weak economies and currencies are particularly active.
Globally, MIR4 is especially popular in the Philippines. There is also a relatively high interest in MIR4 in Thailand and Laos.
It can be assumed that most banned players are people from the Philippines who wanted to earn some extra money with bots in MIR4.
We see a similar phenomenon with the game Axie Infinity:
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