Lost Ark has been experiencing a substantial botting problem, with automated accounts completing quests and activities for the purpose of farming in-game currency, particularly silver and gold. Many of these bot farms operate through the use of a virtual private network, such that they protect the bot owner’s original IP from being traced by Lost Ark developer Smilegate’s anti-cheat team.
To intervene with the operation of these bot farms, Smilegate has introduced a VPN ban to Lost Ark. Before players ask: no, accounts will not be banned for attempting to play Lost Ark with a VPN activated. Instead, the game will simply not launch if a VPN is enabled.
These measures are implemented through Lost Ark’s Easy Anti-Cheat, which activates and scans the player’s system for malicious or competitively dishonest software before the game can be opened.
Circumventing the VPN ban: More difficult than you’d think
Under these measures, there exists no current method of playing Lost Ark with a VPN on. Attempting to activate one after Easy Anti-Cheat has allowed Lost Ark to boot will instead disconnect the player from the game’s servers and close the game.
Unfortunately, this change means that players in the west can no longer use a VPN to access the Russian, Korean, or Japanese servers from their home countries. As a result, this portion of the playerbase no longer has reliable access to content that has not yet been ported to western clients.
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