Amazon Bans VPN Use In Lost Ark To Combat Botters And Ease Congestion

Amazon Game Studios has implemented new measures to combat botting in Lost Ark and make space for actual players. Reports of extremely long queues have been flooding the official forums and Reddit over the past few weeks, at times with over 13,000 players waiting in line.

In line with this, the team is now blocking all VPN users from accessing the game, both as a way to deter bot users and because it goes against the studio’s terms of use.

“We have put blockers in place to prevent users from connecting to Lost Ark through VPN services,” announced Amazon. “This is one of the steps we are taking combat botters, as it will help prevent them from being able to circumvent some of the restrictions we have in place and make it more difficult for them to connect to the game.”

“While we understand that some legitimate players may use VPNs for other reasons, please note that using a VPN is against the Amazon Games Terms of Service 465. You can find this in section 5.2 — ‘You may not use any technology or technique to obscure or disguise your location,’ they added. “While your account will not be banned if you used a VPN in the past, we may not allow future connections with these methods in order to prevent abuse.”

Unfortunately, the VPN ban hasn’t done anything to ease congestion since Chinese players and botters have already found a way around the newly-implemented measure. This means that the only ones that were affected by the ban are actual players who’ve been using VPN’s for their own reasons.

In addition to banning the use of VPN’s, the developers are also working on fixes to improve server stability which will be rolling out during the next scheduled maintenance period. Details can be found on the Lost Ark official forums.