Bohemia Interactive have announced that Arma 3 will only be playable via Steam. This decision was taken due to the hurdles they faced in the development process.
Project Lead Joris-Jan van ‘t Land explains that in order to release the game in 2013, they had to take such a step.
“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.“
The development team is also looking to add new features using Steamworks.
Joris-Jan van ‘t Land said, “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.”
The developer has assured that this decision will pay off and fans will see the results.