We first brought you the story of two ArmA III developers from Bohemia Interactive who were arrested recently in Greece and charged with espionage. Apparently the two game developers were on the Greek island of Lemnos and were caught near a military facility on the island with photographs and videos of the facility, which is not exactly legal for them to do without permission. Bohemia were quiet about the matter, confirming that yes, indeed this did happen, but waiting for more details before making a public statement about it.
Marek Spanel of Bohemia Interactive made a statement on their public forums today: “We can confirm that two Bohemia Interactive employees, our colleagues and friends, were arrested during their holiday trip to Lemnos. They visited the island with the sole purpose of experiencing the island’s beautiful surroundings.
“Since its establishment in 1999, Bohemia Interactive has created games based only upon publicly available information. We always respect the law and we’ve never instructed anybody to violate the laws of any country. The same is true for Arma 3.
“Currently, all our effort goes towards supporting the guys over there, as well as their friends and families affected by this difficult situation. We sincerely hope that this is an unfortunate misunderstanding of their passion as artists and creators of virtual worlds.”
Well, they originally stated that they didn’t want to discuss this on their forums, but apparently now they’ve changed their stance on that. Let’s hope for the best for the two developers, who look to be facing a preliminary trial shortly which will decide how this whole ordeal will unfold. It is still unclear if they were there with the purpose of scouting the military facilities or if they really were just there to soak in the sights to help inspire them to work on ArmA III, a military shooter.
