As reported by VGC, Bohemia Interactive, the developer behind Arma 3, recently shared an official statement regarding some footage taken from the game and massively shared on social media and even some official outlets as videos of real-world wars, especially the current war in Ukraine.
The developer acknowledged that due to the open environment and sandbox gameplay of Arma 3 which allows players to create their own mods, scenarios, and footage, a wide variety of videos captured from the game have been spotted recently, falsely reported as the footage of war in Ukraine in social media.
Bohemia Interactive reveals that their attempts to shut down such videos doesn’t seem to put an end to this issue as players will always be able to create new scenarios and share them in public outlets as real-world war footage.
Instead, the developer offers some tips for outlets, so they can distinguish the in-game footage from a real-world war scene. According to Bohemia, if you see some footage appearing on media as war footage with lower resolution than normal, shaky camera, lacking sound, featuring HUD and unnatural particle effects, you can doubt that this could be a footage from Arma 3 rather a real-world scene. The developer explains each of these factors in details, which you can read via this link.
This isn’t the first time that Arma 3 footage is being used as fake war news. We have had similar false reports in the past as well, especially the air-strike vision of Arma 3 for bombers which makes it really tough to distinguish from a real-world footage.
As a military warfare simulation, Arma 3 takes place in 2035 in fictional locations. The game has always known for its superior simulation of war, which has been advanced even more thanks to its sandbox environment that allows players to create their own scenarios and make it even more realistic using mods.
According to Bohemia, there are currently over 20,000 mods available for Arma 3 through Steam Workshop. As a result, it would be extremely difficult to put an end to the production of such footage, as it is just the nature of Arma 3 to simulate a war.