Hi folks, I cannot run BDO at the same time while playing other games that also use EAC (Easy Anti-Cheat). Recently, Lost Ark is one of them. Here is an example of some folks with the same problem:

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/comments/smsxq4/you_likely_wont_be_able_to_afk_bdo_whilst_playing/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1599340/discussions/0/3180107161589205206/

Here are some reasons this could be a problem:

It affects the business bottom line. One of the things that helps repeat business in BDO is giving players an incentive to leave the game open -- make it as easy as possible for people to give you their money. Giving people a reason to close BDO gives people another chance to not start up the game again. And obviously, people aren't going to spend money on a game they don't play. As much as people might enjoy BDO, it's unreasonable to expect them to not play other games.

I should add that this affects both Pearl Abyss and EAC as well -- if developers and publishers see that EAC does not play well with other legit software, it may give them less of a reason to not choose EAC.

Here is a list of companies and games using EAC, which include games like Lost Ark, New World, Fortnite, and Battlefield 2042. Every single company and game using EAC is now another competitor taking a small slice of the pie away from BDO. https://www.easy.ac/en-us/partners/

This can also bring into question the competency of EAC. Previous, less-capable anti-cheat programs usually had no problems with other games. If EAC doesn't even work with itself, could there be other hidden problems that they're not sharing? Imagine if some type of antivirus or security software installed on your PC would only let you run one program at a time. Is that reasonable? Again, this gives people less reason to choose EAC.

I realize PA doesn't have much say in how EAC is programmed, but it would be nice if this concern could be passed onto them. Some people are saying that games running the same version of EAC will work together, so maybe it's a matter of actually enforcing games to actually use the latest version of EAC?

Im sure PA knows. They seem not to care to update the version in today's patch, maybe in the next, that's how much they care

Yeah this is highly annoying at this point and it's been going on for many weeks now. I can't tab it down to play Lost Ark, Hunt Showdown, and a handfull of other games. Really needs to be fixed so we can keep BDO open while doing other things, otherwise what is the point of having the minimize to tab button? 

And PA should keep it like this, there is no point of keeping idle character that doing nothing beside log in and stay afk in town 24/7 doing completely nothing. Those player only doing bad for BDO as they fake online numbers.

As far as I can tell, BDO uses EAC 5.0, and Lost Ark uses EAC 4.0.  [CM]Cadry is correct in that at least Lost Ark needs to update their EAC version.

This problem started for me 3-4 weeks ago.. I been spending alot of time playing new world, although usually I can swap between the two to do various things. Then one patch and I cannot and now I have the same problem with lost ark. I am missing login rewards and passive income..

Cannot run any combination of BDO, lost ark or new world.. all incompatible even though its the same anticheat program. IF this does not get fixed then at least 2 of these games are going to start losing my business. I considered buying a new pc, maybe a laptop for BDO, however I think I already put way to much money into this game as it is and it might be time to instead reconsider that rather than put even more money into it.

It is really annoying that you have to choose to play one or the other.

I want to be able to play multiple games at once especially when people spend a lot to get a good gaming pc to run the latest games.

Unfortunately you can't play it on different users on PC or different laptops because then Steam intervenes. you cannot play 2 separate games on 2 separate devices from the same steam account (which is pretty ridiculous).

So what you actually need to do is you go to your Lost Ark directory and copy Easy AntiCheat folder into your Black Desert directory. You overwrite EVERYTHING in your BDO easy anticheat directory EXCEPT folder called launcher, that needs to be left intact.

Voila, you can play both games now. Thank me later.