The problem is not that they want a specific security attribute on the steam account. The problem is: they offer zero fallback for people who cannot provide that attribute (for whatever reasons).
It should be child’s play to allow people to link their amazon accounts to the game to prove their identities. Heck, we need to use that to log into this very forum.
And on a fun legal/regulatory note:
I live in a jurisdiction where service charges need to be clearly declared. You basically have to put “Usage of this service may incur mobile phone charges at x$” on the advert. That’s not on their product. Nowhere.
They took people’s money. Now they want to deny people access to the stuff they purchased with that money. Some people literally cannot turn the royal crystals they bought into gold. Or use their gold to get equipment.
That a bait & switch if I ever saw one. And it’s wilful.
That’s potentially a very big can of doodoo to step in.
I was wondering did they limit the untrusted account from buying their royal crystal pack? If this system is to limit fraud, prevent those stolen account like they said, the first thing they should stop is accepting money from these untrusted account.
But somehow they seems not limiting it, this makes me feel they are not concerning about stolen account as long as money is going into amazon. The fraud prevention is just an excuse without really intend to fight against fraud.
Nah my solution will be to uninstall and take my time and business elsewhere. Tired of all these damned hoops piling up for legit players while NOTHING CHANGES for these bot farms.
When this doesn’t work (and it won’t) what are they gonna ask for next? A blood sample?
But I’d like to point out, that no matter what will do to try and fight the bots:
there will almost certainly be no 100% solution
almost certainly legit players will always be affected too
Examples:
ban VPNs > some people using these VPNs are affected
implement 2FA > some people can’t use the 2nd factor
implement captchas > loss of QoL and annoying
market/gold restrictions > friend of mine just started recently and was wondering, why she can’t do anything in her stronghold…well rapport gold was changed and it now takes longer > even harder market/trade/item restrictions > players get also affected
use phone number connected to SSN like KR (not possible due to various legal standards but just as an idea) > KR still has bots and ever heard of identity theft? Not to mention that several people, me included, value data privacy more than playing a game (as some people have no smartphones due to individual and legit concerns)
make the game p2p > well then you have to pay something in the first place and p2p games also have bots
In conclusion it doesn’t really matter what they do, legit players will be affected in a way and some will quit. Even if a solution would work for like 80% of the cases, people will quit.
I, for example, think their current solutions will not really work and say: get rid of the whole damn AH. Guess what most people would think of that… it would pretty much work as a hard mitigating solution, but most players might not be happy.
Or like we say in Germany “Pest or Cholera” it’s up to you
Good thing that you can also simply chose to stop playing in this case. Hope you have fun with another game
You can use something like Bluestacks and get Steam Guard Authenticator there if you don’t own a phone. There’s usually always a solution to the problem.
you know a mobile phone can be a flip phone right? No one’s telling you to buy an overpriced $1k+ iphone. You just need one with SMS. There’s also software to spoof a phone number for you that even the bots can use, it just takes them an extra step.
You will never make everyone happy , we are all different …
I proposed 2 step verification and Captcha long time ago as a fast and simple solution knowing it can be bypassed and that will annoy some people … until they found some solid solution like auto-detection and auto-ban scripts and improve EAC …coz that sht’s to ez
Please read the whole thread from the start. All this has been mentioned a couple of times and HowTos for emulation and so on are referenced in the thread.
Some people don’t want to, for some it is to big of a hurdle (understandable).
It simply comes down to:
do you want to play > find a solution, help was offered here and in other threads several times, there is almost certainly a way (not saying it is ideal or in any way good what AGS/SG/Steam does, this is just about the current situation and a way to still play with all features)
or not worth it to invest more time and you don’t want to play anymore, like @Vyvian wrote, also understandable
“Cmon AGS bots are ruining the game! you have to do something!!!”
does something
“Noooooooooo!!!”
As a mute person I have an actual reason to not have a phone. Guess what, I just use one from a family member for something that takes maybe 10 seconds to do and will let me move on with my life without being an obstacle to every attempted solution like people in this forum always do.
Today on totally made up statistics that are completely false. Not sure where you pulled this from, or well, I am but it wouldn’t be appropriate for the forums, but there are several sources that you could have found from even a quick 5 second Google search that would tell you that there are over 20 million more phone subscriptions in the UK than the population, 2% of people surveyed claim not to own phones, 87% of people surveyed to own Smartphones specifically and the list goes on.
The vast majority of the population own a phone. The majority of which own a smartphone. And a minimum of 96% from the office of national statistics have internet in their household as of 2020. Stop portraying something that isn’t the case, we are a first world country with a good standard of living and whilst there are many faults, access to technology is not one of them.
The problem with the phones is, that several people have 2 or even 3.
E.g. business phone and private. And i see many teens in the trains here that have at least 2. I don’t know where the money comes from, but many have an iPhone (for status or so) and an Android, for everything else…
So you can’t conclude from your stats that nearly everyone has a phone, simply based on the subscriptions.
No one of us knows the real numbers, but I’d argue that the percentage of people not owning a phone is far bigger than you might think.
edit:
And just because you mentioned a short search via google:
This comes up as one of the first hits (for me, not using Google):
Not to say that these stats must be totally correct , but it simply shows that there are many different stats out there, many open for interpretation. And just throwing around some numbers doesn’t mean anything
There are definitely people that don’t own a smartphone and can’t use Steam Guard. This topic is being discussed in Steam forums since 2015 (or 2017, not sure right know) and this simply shows, that it is a problem.
This is exactly my point… which apparently you have missed.
It wasn’t to suggest that the quick statistics that I provided are 100% accurate either, hence the reason that I used words such as “claim”, “people surveyed” etc rather than stating things in absolutes. Although the final point regarding the Office of National Statistics is as close as you’re going to get for accuracy on a lot of things.
It was to point out that someone stating “around 20% of people in the UK don’t have a mobile phone” means absolutely nothing and it’s pulling a figure that is misleading and likely inaccurate and trying to present it as the be-all end-all fact.
A large collection of statistics points to the 20% figure being inaccurate and they likely took their value from the same site that you did.
I don’t really buy this argument though. If someone has access to the internet and they are playing Lost Ark, then they, as many people and we have already covered have access to alternative solutions to Steam Guard Authenticator, not exclusively but including the use of emulators.
Point taken
I was rather referring to your conclusion (as far as I understand it), that most people (as in the figure 20% not owning one is far to high) do have a smartphone. Where several stats for many countries similar to the UK point in the direction of ~20%.
Totally on board with you, that you’d have to look deeper into each statistic and read more about the actual measurement and so on.
In the end I say, that I’d much rather take a solution viable for each and everyone (or let’s say 99% of the people), than the one we have now. Which is not the fault of AGS/SG in the first place, but the bad idea of Steam. Because mail is not secure, but the ability to use something else instead of Steam Guard would be better to include more people. No matter if it comes down to only 5% or 10 % or 20%
But as we discussed before: even for the people that do not own a smartphone, there are solutions.
Just matters how badly they want to play. It is a hurdle, but it is not that high I’d argue. And I think we agree on that, based on your previous statements
It didn’t help, you can put 20 authentication factors, but it didn’t solve my problem. The only thing left is for me to pay to buy something in the store of a Free to Play game, to see if I become “Trusted” through the money (it seems to be for that very purpose), in which case the game would become Pay to Win, something that hurts the main principle of the game, because all the other methods don’t seem to work for this damn “Trusted Status”, soon the bots will be multiplying in tens of thousands and I as a player who doesn’t use malicious means can’t enjoy of game functions, meanwhile bots can. To be honest, Amazon Games Studios is a shame, I’ve never had as many problems with a game as I’m having with this one, it even seems that it’s purposeful for the number of players to drop and damage the company, I laugh at that. I hope something is done.
Character Name: Ckronus
Region: South America
Server: Arcturus
Character lvl: 56
it would pretty much work as a hard mitigating solution, but most players might not be happy.
