Bohemia Interactive has issued an official statement regarding two of its employees who were detained in Greece this weekend. Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar were arrested by Greek authorities after shooting a video in which part of the military installation is visible.
It has been suggested over the weekend that the two were in Limnos, a Greek island, researching for their work on Arma 3, where the island appears in a modified state. The game is set in 2035 and Limnos is reduced in size by 25 per cent, with no real-world military bases represented on it. Bohemia Interactive has clarified the situation by stating that Ivan and Martin were visiting as tourists.
Some of our older readers might remember the case, in 2001, of twelve British and two Dutch tourists who were detained after photographing aeroplanes during an open day at a Greek Air Force base in Kalamata. In that case, the group were charged with espionage but that was later reduced to illegal information collection. Eight of that group were sentenced to three years imprisonment and the remaining four all received sentences of a year. They were all acquitted on appeal.
Bohemia Interactive is clearly keen to stress that there was no assignment for the two to gather information for their work and that they were simply interested tourists who had become aware of Limnos after its inclusion in ArmA 3. It’s stressed that they did not enter any military area and that any video which may contain forbidden subject matter is merely a mistake that captures the subject as background to a tourist video.
Source: Press release.
KeRaSh
That is messed up. If they are so tight about people taking pictures of their military stuff then they should just build a huge wall around it.
BLAGGER
They would if they could afford it!
KeRaSh
ZING!
gazzagb
I reckon they must of been snooping around somewhere they shouldn’t of, or at least looking suspicious enough to alert the authorities. Perhaps just working on the game and being there IRL meant curiosity got the better of them.
xdarkmagician
It brings up an interesting point. With the push for realism in the FPS market and some FPS games like Arma going as far as tech can go to create that realism by using real world locations. The future FPS could be used for training invading forces. So it makes sense from a defence standpoint to limit or exclude real world bases or sensitive areas.
With modern day video equipment it’s alot easier for anybody to take a picture of a sensitive area (no pun intended). They were obviously spotted by authorities in a manner that lead to the suspicion they had sensitive photographs… I’m sure the Greek authorities didn’t search them and look for military photos just because they’re Arma devs. It just sounds to me that they whent there to do a little bit of research and whent a bit too far with it. While they don’t deserve the same treatment or punishment as spies, they deserve some form of punishment.
yogh_wayne
I’m rather sure that video games could never reveal details about a military base, that hostile forces don’t already know from satellite photos or espionage. The game devs are not allowed inside, so even if they tried to make everything as realistic as possible, anything you can’t see from the outside would still just be the dev’s imagination.
xdarkmagician
They used to think putting maps of real cities in flight simulators was harmless too. The simulators aren’t for the world super powers that have better resources. It’s more about smaller splinter groups or terrorists that don’t have access to the higher tech level. The outside of a base is just as important in defense, knowing blind spots, tower distances, patrol routes… ect, all play a pivotal role in any successful attack. Once the outer hauls have been breached the odds of successfully defending a base drop significantly. Having any small bit of intel is better then having none. I’ll agree todays games could hardly be used for training, but that might not be true in 10 years. Better to be a bit cautious IMO.