Games Thirst – Amazing Life
The two Czech, Bohemia Interactive developers that were arrested in Greece days ago, have left a message of hope for their families, saying everything’s alright.
The conditions are tough, but the people we meet treat us fairly and correctly. It is all a completely absurd misunderstanding that will certainly be quickly explained. We mainly think of you, our families; you have to stay calm and not to worry about us. We hope we will meet soon.
The studio claimed the two were on Limnos for vacation, and not for work purposes; it’s common knowledge that the Greek island is the setting for ArmA III. However, Ivan Buchta (Creative director) and Martin Pezlar (map designer) were caught with photos and videos of Greek military installations in their possession. How a creative director and a map designer, of all the people working on the game, decided to go on vacation there is somehow strange, and the material they had from the island only comes to add to the strangeness.
Bohemia Interactive chimed in on the matter:
“We sincerely hope that the whole situation is no more than an unfortunate and deep misunderstanding. The in-game Limnos is close to completion, and it’s far from an identical replication of the real place. It was heavily modified to fit the game’s backstory, a purely fictional 2035 setting. It was rescaled to only 75% of the real island, and it does not attempt to display any real world military installations situated on the island of Lemnos.”
“These included a short video as they drove through the main road passing around the international airport, where in one short part of the video off in the distance some hangars and other buildings of the complex can be seen. It’s very likely that many tourists may have pictures similar to those taken by Ivan and Martin in their own family albums, without being aware that they put themselves or their families at risk.”
It should be noted, that no matter their intentions, they should have been prepared for this. Limnos is located right next to Turkey, and with Greece being one of the most major gun importers in Europe, having two unidentified persons taking photos and videos near one of our biggest installations was against the law, and a much more sensitive case, because of all that was mentioned above. Couple that with signs all over the place saying you are not allowed to do what they did exactly, and their lack of permission (which would be something extremely easy to acquire, since they’re a known developer studio), and the developers just got what was coming to them. Nevertheless, I hope the matter is resolved quickly, and at most, they just get a big fine.
