The Steam Summer Sale was some time ago, but the big winner of the sale is already 10 years old and has created an entire genre.
Which game is it? The military simulation Arma 3 performed really well during the Steam Summer Sale. As the publisher Bohemia Interactive announced (via Steam), the game sold over 100,000 copies on the first day alone. By the end of the sale on Steam, more than 500,000 new copies had been sold.
The game itself also grew by about 30% in player numbers (via SteamDB). However, Arma 3 is not an ordinary military simulation. There’s much more behind it.
Here you can watch the trailer for Arma 3:
Arma 3 is the founding father of the Battle Royale genre
What does Arma 3 have to do with Battle Royale? While Arma 3 is actually a military simulation that places great value on realism, there is a huge modding scene. It is here that the Battle Royale concept by PLAYERUNKNOWN emerged.
The mod gained more and more attention, and thus the genre took its course. Many of the biggest game titles that exist today grew out of the concept PLAYERUNKNOWN popularized. PUBG, with 3.2 million and Fortnite, with 3.4 million concurrent players, are among the most played online games in the world.
Alongside the standalone Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, games like H1Z1, Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty: Warzone have celebrated their successes with the genre that once broke through in Arma 3.
Is that why Arma 3 had so much success during the sale? Probably not. Arma 3 received many positive reviews in the past thanks to the modding scene and was 90% off during the sale. Moreover, it was displayed prominently on Reddit at the top of the sale.
For €2.79, many probably just jumped in because they found it interesting. In the meantime, the Battle Royale genre has grown beyond Arma 3. If you want to find out which games were also just a modification in the past, we have an article for you here: These 8 extraordinary shooters on Steam were once just a mod
