Bohemia Interactive today announced their plans for the upcoming PC-exclusive tactical military shooter game, Arma 3. From next week onward, Tuesday March 5th, all are welcome to try out the authentic military gameplay and assist in the game’s development by participating in the Arma 3 Alpha.

The Alpha will feature a limited amount of playable and sandbox content, receive regular updates and remain accessible until Arma 3’s Beta starts – which is expected in the second quarter of this year. The full and final version of Arma 3 is scheduled for release in Q3 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.

What's the deal

As we stand on the verge of revealing our plans for Arma 3, there is one big topic we'd like to get out there first. A long four months ago, I took over as Project Lead for Arma 3, having previously worked on the game as Lead Playable Content. As a team we were facing two quite serious situations: we were not happy with how the project was going, and on top of that two of our colleagues were suddenly arrested for alleged espionage in Greece. The first two months on the job were all about taking an inventory of the project and team, seeing what was going well, what was not, and coming up with plans to fix it all. The mission set by our CEO, Marek Španěl, was clear: do all we can to release Arma 3 in 2013.

One of the steps in this plan has been to select Valve's Steam as our primary platform. Not only is Arma 3 PC-exclusive, but now we have decided to make it Steam-exclusive as well. Since we expect this will upset some of our fans, I'd like to take the time to honestly explain our motivations.

The bottom-line: we feel that without going Steam-exclusive, we would not be able to release Arma 3 in 2013.

Prague, Czech Republic February 15th 2013 - Bohemia Interactive, the award-winning independent Czech development studio, is delighted to announce the release of Arma2: Complete Collection, finally available as one complete package fans new and old alike can experience all that Arma2 has to offer.