Bohemia Interactive has revealed that their upcoming Arma 3 will be a Steam-exclusive title, meaning it will require connection to the Steam servers to play. According to the development house, this has made it possible to release the game in 2013 – otherwise, they would be looking at a later release window. The studio had some recent troubles as two of its developers were arrested and, after a lengthy-detention, released on charges of espionage.
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Official Press Announcement
Prague, Czech Republic, Thursday 21 February 2013 – Ahead of their release plans announcement, Bohemia Interactive has revealed that Valve’s Steam will be required to play Arma 3. In a developer’s blog post, Project Lead Joris-Jan van ‘t Land explains the studio’s motivations, stating that the game could otherwise not be released in 2013.
The “Full Steam Ahead” blog post mentions a difficult phase in development, which also involved the recent incident in Greece. These setbacks drove the studio to re-evaluate the project, and Joris-Jan van ‘t Land refers to the decision for Steam as one of the steps to set Arma 3 back on track for a 2013 release.
“As an independent developer, we’re constantly evaluating the way we develop, distribute and publish games. Valve made tremendous improvements to their system, which made the installation/update process much more user-friendly – for both developers and customers“ , adds Bohemia Interactive’s founder and CEO, Marek Španěl.
“We realize that some people may find it difficult to migrate to a new platform, especially if they were used to purchasing and playing our games without any external third-party application. We have evaluated the pros and cons, but in the end Steam enables us to release Arma 3, brings massive advantages to the game, and improves the end-user experience. Not to forget, the majority of our players already come from Steam.“
Bohemia Interactive is also exploring the further integration of Steamworks functionality, which would enable game features that are impossible to develop in-house, on time. Joris-Jan van ‘t Land: “Valve’s Steamworks offers some cool features that can help us to enhance the Arma experience where it matters. We’ll save the exact details for a later update, but to summarize our priorities in two key words: user-generated content and multiplayer.”
