Lost Ark’s New Anti-Bot Captcha Feature Wasn’t Intended For Live Release Just Yet

Earlier this week, Lost Ark players were surprised to see captcha prompts popping-up randomly while in the game following the release of the Under the Arkesian Sun update. Fail to enter the correct string three times and you were automatically banned. Obviously, the measure was designed to deter bots which continue to be a huge problem in the fantasy MMORPG since it launched earlier this year.

Amazon has confirmed that the captcha prompts are indeed part of their efforts to crackdown on bots but wasn’t intended to go live just yet as the feature is still in testing. “The Captcha system for Lost Ark was unintentionally released into the live game, causing player confusion and frustration,” the studio said. “This Captcha system is being worked on internally as a possible mitigation for fighting back against bots and improving the game experience for real players. As it is not feature complete, it was not intended for release on live servers at this time.”

Regardless of whether it was intentional or not, the feature succeeded in weeding out bots and effectively reduced the game’s population by as much as 50% when it came out. Unfortunately, some legitimate players were caught by surprise by the random prompts and were inadvertently banned. Affected players are advised to contact customer support to have the ban and any penalties incurred by their account reversed.

The captcha system has now been removed and Amazon promises to share more information about the feature ahead of its actual release. Meanwhile, the studio is already preparing for another massive bot purge sometime this summer. Any players accidentally caught in the net are once again advised to contact support to have their account reinstated.