Somehow, the 11-year-old niche mil-sim Arma 3 managed to sell nearly 700,000 copies during the Steam Summer Sale

GamesFPSArma 3Somehow, the 11-year-old niche mil-sim Arma 3 managed to sell nearly 700,000 copies during the Steam Summer SaleWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Bohemia Interactive)

Arma 3: CSLA Cold War

A very strange thing happened during the recently-concluded 2024 Steam Summer Sale: Almost 700,000 copies of Bohemia Interactive’s military simulatorArma 3were sold, an astounding figure that includes the game’s biggest single-day sales figure ever.

(Image credit: Bohemia Interactive)

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And that’s what makes the sales number so unexpected: Arma 3 has been around for more than 10 years, debuting as a public alpha in March 2013 beforerolling into full launchin September of the same year. How does a game more than a decade old put up sales figures that would be the envy of a brand-new release?

“The two biggest factors were definitely a very generous discount of the base game (90% for the first time) and that Arma 3 was featured at the Steam front page,” Bohemia Interactive’s Pavel Křižka told PC Gamer. “But no doubt it’s also about the uniqueness of the whole Arma platform. Despite Arma 3 being more than 10 years old, there still nothing quite like it available for mil-sim game lovers.”

Křižka said Arma 3 may have also benefited from a “synergistic effect” withArma Reforger, a sort of introductory version of the still-unseen Arma 4 that was released in 2022. While it’s nowhere near as popular as Arma 3, Reforger has seen a notable uptick in concurrent players in recent months, a bump some redditors attributed toOperatorDrewski, a military game streamer with nearly two million subscribers on YouTube.

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OperatorDrewski posted an Arma Reforger video in April that, despite numerous criticisms of the game, was very enthusiastic; he also said Arma Reforger is “booming right now,” and has tripled its population since January. It looks like a ton of fun, and the video has thus far accrued 730,000 views.

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“I guess it’s possible for people that got introduced to Reforger and were looking for a more fleshed out game, mods, and expansions hopped on the Arma 3 sale,” redditorLeetModulesuggested.

Interestingly, while Arma 3 also enjoyed a bump in concurrent player numbers immediately after the start of the Steam Summer Sale, it hasn’t been huge. On the weekend of June 22, before the start of the same, the peak concurrent player count was just a hair under 17,000, according toSteamDB; the peak concurrent player count since then was 22,496.

(Image credit: SteamDB)

Arma 3 concurrent player count as of July 19 2024

That lends credence to the simplest explanation for the bump: It’s $3, it’s on the front page of Steam, it’s also featured in the new “Deep Discounts” sale category, and as at least one redditor noted, after being on Steam for 10 years it’s probably on a whole lot of wishlists. For three bucks, hey, you buy it now, you get around to it when you can—and maybe you just don’t get around to it ever. Let’s be honest, we’ve all made that kind of game purchase at least once in the past.

Whatever the reason, Bohemia made a point of welcoming newcomers with a roundup of guides to getting into the game, covering everything from a “Boot Camp Quickstart” to modding the game and a guide on how to find a good unit to join. It’s a lot to take in, especially if you’re coming into it expecting something akin to a Modern Warfare experience, but probably a good idea to at least browse through it: As redditoralbatrossSKYput it, “I wonder how many of these people know that you need to have a key assignment for every key on your fucking keyboard to play this game?”

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