{"id":905986,"date":"2025-12-25T07:17:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T07:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3mWscszqbdQNb6RcTLtp75"},"modified":"2025-12-25T07:17:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T07:17:18","slug":"somehow-the-11-year-old-niche-mil-sim-arma-3-managed-to-sell-nearly-700000-copies-during-the-steam-summer-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/somehow-the-11-year-old-niche-mil-sim-arma-3-managed-to-sell-nearly-700000-copies-during-the-steam-summer-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"Somehow, the 11-year-old niche mil-sim Arma 3 managed to sell nearly 700,000 copies during the Steam Summer Sale"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A very strange thing happened during the recently-concluded 2024 Steam Summer Sale: Almost 700,000 copies of Bohemia Interactive's military simulator Arma 3<\/a> were sold, an astounding figure that includes the game's biggest single-day sales figure ever.<\/p>\n

The runaway sales success was first reported by Bohemia on July 16. “Welcome to the over 500,000 new recruits that have joined the Arma 3 community during the Steam Summer Sale 2024!” the studio wrote in a welcome-to-the-club message<\/a> on Steam. “Close to 100,000 of you joined us during the sale's first day\u2014the highest number of copies sold in a single day dating all the way back to the initial Arma 3 Alpha release in March 2013!”<\/p>\n

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\"Arma<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Bohemia Interactive)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 before rolling into full launch<\/a> in 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?<\/p>\n

“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 K\u0159i\u017eka 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.”<\/p>\n

The final Arma 3 sales numbers were even higher than Bohemia's Steam announcement suggested. K\u0159i\u017eka said a total of 695,000 copies of the base game were sold during the Steam sale, along with 196,000 pieces of DLC. By way of comparison, the previous Arma 3 sale on Steam, during which the game was discounted by 80% and was not promoted on the Steam home page, saw “just” 249,000 copies sold\u2014which, I have to be honest, strikes me as pretty damn good in its own right.<\/p>\n

Arma 3 also saw “great sales” in countries including Brazil, Turkey, and China, as well as throughout South America, during the Steam Sale, “which are not traditionally our strongest markets,” K\u0159i\u017eka said. The US accounts for roughly 60% of the revenues generated by Arma 3, according to K\u0159i\u017eka, followed by the UK, Germany, and France: Major gaming markets, and also countries that might understandably have a more pointed interest in a simulated East vs West war in Europe.<\/p>\n

K\u0159i\u017eka said Arma 3 may have also benefited from a “synergistic effect” with Arma Reforger<\/a>, 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 to OperatorDrewski<\/a>, a military game streamer with nearly two million subscribers on YouTube.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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