It did this by selling/licensing a prototype of "ARMA III" directly to its customers. When access-control measures are introduced, it’ll be impractical for the pirates to keep up.īohemia circumvented the disadvantageous access to the cash they needed to create its software. But as the game is continually updated, those pirated copies will be obsolete in just a few days. Yes, pirated copies of "ARMA III"'s alpha release are available on the usual websites, but this is probably because the developers chose not to implement digital rights management in their product. The real genius of this play is its subversion of piracy. But since most computer games are bought and transmitted digitally now, consumers don’t have worry about limited availability in retail stores.īohemia’s plan here isn’t just meant to curry favor with consumers, raise capital, and achieve higher profit margins by cutting out the financial middleman. Software companies used to finance the development and distribution of their products with pre-orders. Sure, smaller indie game developers like Data Realms have employed similar tactics, but Bohemia is a major game developer and their software costs several tens of million dollars to produce. Releasing an “alpha” directly to consumers has never been done on this level.
In fact, it’s one of the best-selling titles on gaming network Steam-at the time of this writing it's the network's third most popular game, behind the pre-orders of mega-franchise games like "Bioshock" and "Resident Evil." With the unexpected influx of capital, Bohemia hired Dean Hall and is now making "ARMA III" and a standalone version of "DayZ."Įven though the game isn't finished, you can buy it and play it right now. At its height last year, "DayZ" had almost a million unique players. Three years later, in April of 2012, a fan named Dean Hall released a modification for "ARMA II" called "DayZ." The mod received near-unprecedented critical acclaim, and its popularity led to over 300,000 sales of "ARMA II" three years after its release-something unheard of for a game of its kind. "ARMA II" was released in the middle of 2009. It lost the rights to the name “Operation Flashpoint” but it released sequels under the name “ARMA,” which were met with moderate success. For reasons still private, though perhaps related to the money they got from the licensing of VBS1, Bohemia parted ways with its publisher Codemasters.
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