Arma 3

A Russian television station has mistakenly aired footage from a video game during a report on the war in Syria.

Arma 3 is getting a new campaign expansion about decommissioning landmines.

Dubbed Laws of War, this premium DLC will launch on 12th September and a portion of its proceeds will go to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The actual amount given to charity will be announced next year.

The main course of this expansion is the Remnants of War mini-campaign wherein players are put in the role of IDAP (International Development & Aid Project) explosive specialist Nathan MacDade who's in charge of deactivating the remaining mines following the war in the Republic of Altis & Stratis. You'll also experience flashback sequences during the war from a variety of different perspectives as an investigative journalist interviews you.

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Last year Arma 3 developer Bohemia Interactive announced an experimental "Incubator" program where it would develop smaller experimental games and release them for free as sort of a testing ground. Now one of those games, the 5v5 competitive FPS Argo, has a set release date of 22nd June.

Arma dev Bohemia has unleashed a new early access platform called Incubator, and on it are two new games: Project Argo and Ylands. Both are made by small teams at Bohemia.

The huge Apex expansion has been released for Arma 3. It costs £25 alone or £45 bundled with the base game.

Apex brings an entire South Pacific area to the series for the first time - a massive archipelago some 100km2 in size. There are jungles, shanty towns, even a volcano for goodness sake.

There are new armed forces factions, there are 13 new weapons, 10 new vehicles - including a propeller plane! - and there's a whole new co-op campaign four people can play.

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A brand new Arma game has been released but it's an iOS and Android game called Arma Mobile Ops.

There's a huge and attractive new South Pacific playground coming to military simulation Arma 3 in an expansion pegged for first-half 2016.

Tanoa is its name and it's a sprawling archipelago where the landmass alone measures some 100km2. But there's also loads of water expanding it further.

Getting around that space means boats and planes as well as on-land vehicles with silly old wheels. This is the first South Pacific playground for the Arma series, and it's bright and colourful and I could easily holiday there.

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Star Wars: Battlefront comes out in November, but you can get a taste of the action a little sooner via this new Arma 3 mod.

The €500,000 Make Arma Not War competition - designed to find the best Arma 3 mods around - has come to an end, and the winners have been announced.

A year ago developer Bohemia launched a €500,000 competition called Make Arma Not War to uncover the best modifications for army game Arma 3. After all, mod culture runs deep at Bohemia, and it's where DayZ came from.

The depth of military simulation Arma 3 both keeps people playing and puts people off. Bohemia's free Bootcamp update aims to address the latter issue.

Detailed in a new blog post, Bootcamp is a suite of bespoke new training tools that ease new players into the game.

There's a Bootcamp campaign, a Virtual Arsenal, Multiplayer Bootcamp, Virtual Training and VR Training.

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Czech developer Bohemia has more to celebrate than just DayZ: military war simulation Arma 3 has passed 1m sales.

Company boss Marek Spanel announced the milestone on Twitter last night.

By comparison, DayZ sales crossed the 2m mark in early May.

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Arma 3 developer Bohemia Interactive has laid out a development roadmap for the game's next 12 (or so) months, which will comprise at least two DLC add-ons and a major expansion next year.

Imagine waking one morning to discover that two of your staff had been detained in a foreign country over allegations of espionage. What would you do? You're not the head of MI6. You don't employ spies. You employ developers who make video games. You discover the news in your online forum but soon it's spread like wildfire, to local radio and TV, and people are knocking at your door for comment. What do you say? What do you tell the families of the arrested men?

The free downloadable Zeus content for Arma 3, which adds D&D Dungeon Master-style tools that you can play god with during live multiplayer games, has been released.

It's the dead of night on the CSAT-occupied island of Stratis, and the peaceful darkness is about to explode into chaos. I'm leading one of two spec-ops teams on a mission to liberate the leader of a local guerrilla faction and return him to the much larger island of Altis. A British squad is in charge of the actual rescue. Our job is to cause as much trouble across the island as possible to distract the CSAT forces and give the British the opening they need.

Over the next hour, that's precisely what I do. Inserting by boat from the northwest coast, I head south and raid an ammo dump before cutting across to the eastern shore to destroy a heliport. Then my squad suppresses an enemy encampment from a hillside near the centre of the island as I swoop in from the west to flank them. Yet before we can regroup, my entire team is killed by reinforcements descending from the north, and the British still need more time to complete their mission. Alone, I rush to the southernmost tip of the island, where I blow up a fortified anti-air position before escaping by riding a quad bike back through the swarming enemy forces to the extraction point, where the boat takes me home.

Arguably the biggest complaint about Bohemia Interactive's post-Flashpoint games is that their campaigns haven't used the magnificent landscapes they create to their full potential. The first Arma's campaign was a hastily cobbled-together disappointment, while it took a certain zombie-survival mod to harness the austere and foreboding power of Arma 2's Chernarus. That Arma 3 uses half an island for just one of its twenty-odd missions is indicative of Bohemia's effort to resolve this ongoing issue. Indeed, taken as a whole, Arma 3 strives to make this deep and impenetrable military simulator series a more comprehensive, more engaging and more user-friendly experience. It isn't completely successful, but I had an awful lot of fun watching it try.

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Czech developer Bohemia does have PS4 and Xbox One dev kits, but Arma 3 won't be adapted for them.

The third and final campaign episode for Arma 3 will arrive on 20th March, developer Bohemia Interactive has announced.

Titled simply "Win", the military shooter's last story missions will conclude the story of infantryman protagonist Ben Kerry, and offer combat "on a larger scale" than ever before.

"Tactical freedom - together with big, combined arms engagements - is at the heart of Episode 3's gameplay," Arma 3 creative director Jay Crowe said, "as we follow Kerry's story to its conclusion."

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It's easy to forget in all the hype about DayZ about its bigger brother Arma 3, which is a bit of a shame as it's a stonking game. Bohemia Interactive's augmenting it a little too with the Zeus DLC, a multiplayer add-on that introduces Dungeons & Dragons style Game Master tools. And it's free!

This could be brilliant: modern war sim Arma 3 will introduce Dungeons & Dragons-style Game Master tools that will let players change, in real-time, multiplayer battles.

Most modders don't get paid for their hard work (well, it paid off for this chap). Now, they have a chance to by tinkering with a military sim.

The second slice of Arma 3's story campaign will be deployed via Steam on 21st January 2014, developer Bohemia Interactive has announced.

Survive, the first campaign episode for military sim sandbox Arma 3 launches on 31st October 2013, Bohemia Interactive has announced.

War games are becoming so realistic that it's time virtual soldiers started obeying the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross has argued.

The battle is not yet joined. While Arma 3 is now available to buy, what you can download from Steam right now only represents an advance guard, a selection of showcase missions and equipment demonstrations. The main body is to follow, with the game's campaigns coming next month as a free add-on. There's the opportunity to join in multiplayer or download extra missions via Steam Workshop, but otherwise it's a slim offering and at the moment Arma 3 isn't a complete game. In lieu of a review, here are some first impressions.

UPDATE: Arma 3 will finally be released on 12th September, developer Bohemia Interactive has just announced.

Arma 3 developer Bohemia Interactive has been hacked.

The Arma 3 beta has been released.

If you were part of the Arma 3 alpha you'll get access to the beta by downloading the automatic update on Steam. Otherwise, you can buy the beta, which includes the full retail game when it releases later this year, from Steam or the Bohemia Interactive Store, where it costs £29.99.

The beta version of the PC tactical military shooter includes the 20 km² island of Stratis, 20 weapons, 18 vehicles, three factions, eight showcase missions, four multiplayer scenarios, four challenges, the scenario editor and modding support.

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Tactical PC shooter Arma 3 will enter into its alpha testing phase on 5th March, developer Bohemia Interactive has announced.

Arma 3 will require Steam to run, developer Bohemia Interactive has announced.

Boxed copies of Arma 3 will still be available - these will either be Steam codes in a retail package, or contain DVD data to speed up installation.

The decision for Arma 3 to be exclusive to Valve's service follows a "difficult phase in development" following the "recent incident in Greece", Bohemia explained - when two of its developers were arrested on charges of espionage and held in jail for four months.

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Martin Pezlar and Ivan Buchta - the two Bohemia Interactive employees jailed on espionage charges in Greece but now bailed - have returned home.

Imprisoned ArmA 3 developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar have finally been granted bail after 128 days behind bars in a Greek jail.

ArmA 3 developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar have sent a letter from their Greek cell thanking all those who have wished them well.

The president of the Czech Republic has formally contacted his Greek counterpart over the plight of two ArmA 3 developers arrested on charges of espionage.

Held for 70 days behind bars in a Greek cell, ArmA 3 developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar have now been denied an appeal against their charges of espionage.

ArmA 3 developer Bohemia Interactive has asked for your help freeing two members of staff arrested on espionage charges for allegedly photographing Greek military installations.

Two ArmA 3 developers arrested last week on charges of espionage have spoken out from their Greek prison.

UPDATE 2: ArmA developer Bohemia Interactive has claimed two of its staff were on holiday on the Greek island of Lemnos before they were arrested - not on a research mission for ArmA 3.

Company CEO Marek Spanel this evening issued Eurogamer the following statement on the issue:

"We can confirm that two Bohemia Interactive employees, our colleagues and friends, were arrested during their holiday trip to Lemnos. They visited the island with the sole purpose of experiencing the island's beautiful surroundings.

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Oh, and loads of improvements.

How realistic do you like your war games? Because sandbox military sim ArmA 3, on PC, gets more lifelike by the day.

Here's a muzzle flash for you!

Scuba-dooba-doo!

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Underwater! Night! Sunset!

PC shooter Arma 3's community alpha test will be set on the fictional Greek island of Stratis, developer Bohemia Interactive has revealed.

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PC players everywhere will be able to try upcoming shooter Arma 3 after E3 this year.

UPDATE: Bohemia Interactive has issued Eurogamer the following short statement on the delay of Arma 3.

"We did not reveal exact release date so far but our target was for some time and still is Q4 2012 (instead of early plans of late summer that was announced initially)," said a spokesperson.

"However, we are prepared to give development additional time if it will need it to ensure as good experience as possible. As soon as we have more specific release dates and plans we are going to communicate it clearly.

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Broadcasting standards agency Ofcom has slammed ITV for mistakenly labelling a clip of video game Arma 2 as real-life footage of a Libya-funded IRA attack.

Arma 2 developer Bohemia has shared an eye-opening statistic about piracy levels on PC.

ArmA 2 developer Bohemia Interactive does not expect ITV's recent Gaddafi documentary gaffe to impact ArmA sales one way or the other.

Bohemia Interactive CEO Marek Spanel told Eurogamer he does not anticipate a sales boost despite ArmA 2 recently hitting headlines. Nor does he expect a public backlash over the game now being linked with the Libyan dictator.

"We don't expect this bizarre event to influence sales of our products either way," Spanel said, "but still it's good to see gaming covered in more mainstream media."

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Shows disguises, underwater and more.

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PC exclusive shooter looking high-calibre.

Military sim drops the bomb.

Operation Flashpoint creator Bohemia Interactive has announced a third Arma game for release exclusively on PC next summer.

Arma 3 drops the silly capitalisation of the second A and packs an "open-ended" story that follows a last-ditch NATO mission to a Mediterranean island. The operation turns sour and Captain Scott Miller finds himself washed up a hostile island, albeit with a well equipped squad - judging by the screenshots below (well spotted Clive Dunn). He'll need to survive, adapt, win - they're the Arma 3 buzzwords.

Controllable vehicles return - ships, aircraft, landlubbers - and there are co-operative and competitive multiplayer scenarios for you and your friends/enemies. Dedicated servers are supported and these run on Linux as well as Windows.

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