Ahead of their release plans announcement, Bohemia Interactive has revealed that Valve’s Steam will be required to play Arma 3 the latest installment of the tactical military simulation game.“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”, said 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.“

Boxed copies of Arma 3 will still be available at retail in most regions. These will either be Steam Codes in a retail package, or also contain DVD data to speed up installation.