The news has been debated for several weeks now: Lost Ark will not be available in some Western countries while the game is scheduled to be deployed in all other countries in Europe and North America from Friday, February 11, 2022.
In which countries is Lost Ark unavailable?
According to Amazon Games Studio, only Belgium and the Netherlands will not have direct access to Lost Ark . Players from these countries can therefore neither access the game's test realms nor the official Lost Ark realms. The laws in force in these two countries prevent Amazon Games Studio from publishing the MMOARPG developed by Smilegate there.
What are the reasons for the banning of Lost Ark in some countries?
Officially, the reason given is that " laws relating to random rewards from paid content " prohibit the publication of Lost Ark in these countries. Understand here that the store accessible in game in exchange for real money offers chests with a chance of obtaining a vast quantity of different objects, thus encouraging the player to buy several (many) in order to obtain the object. exactly what he is looking for. It is likely the Chests of Gems and Packs of Cards that could be affected.
However, that is not all since the implications of the Refining system could also be involved. While this system offers to improve your equipment in exchange for components obtained in the high level contents, it is actually very random. Refining does indeed have a chance of failing, with this chance decreasing after each failure.
Since 15 refinement levels are available for each item, the amount of materials required for optimal equipment is colossal. But with the possible introduction of Mari's Secret Shop allowing the acquisition of high-level components in exchange for real money, it is highly likely that the anti-gambling laws set forth in Belgium and the Netherlands will have them even more. encouraged to prohibit access to a game with " predatory commercial practices " according to some players.
This is only speculation for the moment, as Mari's Secret Shop was not available in the Beta version of Lost Ark in November 2021. Nevertheless, even if this was not questioned, the official Twitter account dedicated to Lost Ark has indeed confirmed the reasons for this ban in these two countries, reasons in the best case related to the random chests offered in the store.
Before even choosing your main class in Lost Ark you might want to select what server you will play on and here's a little something to help you in your decision, be it population or language information
