This week, after the Under the Arkesian Sun update, Lost Ark players noticed that CAPTCHA requests were popping up in game, leading some to miss their guesses and see their accounts banned. After first saying that the CAPTCHA in-game was unintentional, the team is sharing more on why it happened, and promising affected players their accounts back.
For those who suspected that the appearance of these requests was part of Lost Ark’s ongoing additions to security measures in the fight against bots and exploits, this is true. However, it was in testing and wasn’t complete or ready to be pushed to live yet.
"The Captcha system for Lost Ark was unintentionally released into the live game, causing player confusion and frustration. 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."
Introducing a system like this to join other measures, like Steam verification, limiting chat participation, a waiting period to access gold earned via Powerpasses, and requiring two-factor authentication, makes sense. The Lost Ark team has vowed to continue battling against botting, and even announced a bot purge this summer.
In the case of this new CAPTCHA system, if and when they do decide it’s complete and ready for a security use, they promise that details on possible implementation will be shared ahead of time.
Those affected by any penalties received after encountering the CAPTCHA requests in-game will be able to get their accounts back and in good standing. Any related penalties will be removed, but you’ll have to contact support to let them know. Right now, the CAPTCHA system is turned off and won’t happen in the live game, so things should be clear on this situation for now.
